One in three young women feel under pressure to present themselves as having a “perfect” life on social media, a survey has found. In a poll by the charity Girlguiding, 35% of girls aged 11-21 said their biggest worry online was comparing themselves to others.

We asked a group of young people to share their views on this.



Maddie McGowan, 15, from Southampton: ‘I compare myself to other people all the time’

As a young girl, I do feel I need to be perfect and compare myself to others all the time. My sister is stunning, so I look at her and think: I need to look like her. It’s so negative. In reality, everyone is perfect just the way they are.

Girls are on social media all the time and follow celebrities and friends. But everyone portrays their “best self” on social media and it’s not accurate. They can use Photoshop and can change their appearance, and that sets people up to fail as they think they should look like that, but it’s not a realistic image.

There is always an unspoken feeling that you need to be better than other people and that creates a negative environment.

I think Instagram is the worst because it’s not live, so you can change pictures once you have posted them and you can buy followers. This creates the idea that someone is perfect as they have loads of likes and followers, but that is not always the case.

Julia Peters, 22, from Leicestershire: ‘I have friends who lose confidence and delete their photos’

I have friends who will go for months posting selfies of themselves and they will be really edited. Then, when I check back on their Instagram, all the pictures will be deleted because they lost confidence. They decide they don’t want their photos “out there”. They think they need to start again and present a different image.

There is an unwritten rule about how you should look in your pictures – how you should do your makeup and what filter you should use. A lot of people can’t cope with the anxiety if they see someone has criticised a photo, or posted a picture that looks better than theirs.

A lot of parents don’t understand what happens on social media. They think it’s people posting photos of what they had to eat, but there is also a lot of bullying going on. Children also see a lot of inappropriate images. There is a great deal of porn-related content online.

Social media networks have their positives and negatives. But Instagram is the one I see as portraying the image of girls having to live up to a certain beauty standard. Maybe for younger girls it is Snapchat, but for my age group it is Instagram. You should be 13 to sign up to certain social media accounts, but I know girls who are much younger than that who have been on social media for a year.

Evelyn Green, 18, from Durham: ‘The attitude is, if this photo does not get many likes then I will delete it’

I got Instagram and Snapchat in the past year and notice a lot of girls worry about comparing themselves with others online. For me, there is “fear of missing out” – you see other people’s lives and what they are doing. People only put good bits of life online and, even though you know this, you still see their “perfect” lives and it makes you think yours isn’t.

You get people who are famous for being on social media. Young people idolise them, but actually these social media stars have the same problems as everyone else.

I know there is an attitude of “if this photo does not get this many likes then I will delete it”. Some people get 70 or 150 likes. I wouldn’t expect to get that many, but for some that is the norm. Some people make sure their account is not private to get more likes.



Raheela Shah, 21, from London: ‘I have held enough back to not be as emotionally involved as others’

I have had friends drop me a message to say “like my pic” and I jokingly reply saying, “You are all in it for the likes”, and that is true. There is a sense of validation attached to likes, which can be misleading because at the end of the day some accounts are fake. They will like pictures based on a hashtag.

Seeing stuff online does not make me change the way I feel about myself. I like flicking through social media but don’t upload that much. I don’t feel like I have put that much myself out there, but you can find me online. I have held enough back that I don’t feel too emotionally involved with it, but for other people that is not necessarily the case.

People my age are less engrossed in it all than the younger generation. I don’t even know what a “Snapchat streak” is. Social media moves so quickly that even over a five-year age gap it can be very different. I didn’t get Facebook until I was 15 as my mum was really against it. That has perhaps affected my experience, as I have not been in the social media bubble for as long as a lot of people.

Nafeesa Deen, 19, from Buckinghamshire: ‘I know two girls with eating disorders who have huge Instagram followings’

Social media puts pressure on you to go on amazing holidays and buy into all these fab diets. It feels like you’re sold a life and are expected to live up to a standard that is impossible to achieve.

A lot of the bloggers on Instagram, for example, might have a new dress or be on a new diet, but they will get this stuff free from companies. A lot of the time they can’t even afford the lifestyles they espouse themselves, but they still sell them online.

In the summer there will be lots of photos of people on holiday. It becomes tricky, because you compare your body to other girls and a lot of the time you don’t know their story. I know two girls, for example, who have eating disorders but they have a huge following on Instagram. People post comments saying, “Your body is amazing.” Reading comments like that also does not help the girls who are experiencing problems.

