Face it, don’t Facebook it!

Recently a close friend of mine called me up in the middle of the night, she sounded distressed and quickly came to the point asking me to untag her from a photo I had uploaded of her during a recent get together. Her explanation was that the lighting didn’t do her justice and that she looked “too pale”. This is a truly sad but common situation. Don’t get me wrong, I love Facebook, where else can you get a healthy dose of ego-driven narcissism and self esteem just by gathering “likes” on a post? So what is it that makes us so self-conscious that we become extremely sceptical about the way we look?

It’s true that our fixation with pouting our lips makes us feel worse about our own bodies than staring at celebrities in fashion magazines. But when you see your friends in their perfect coif and manicured nails, there is a moral obligation to keep up with them because they are real ordinary folks.

This is especially true in the case of young adults as they can go on mindless diets, all in the name of a perfect selfie.

So can social media actually make a person feel bad about his or her body?

I say yes, and the main reason is that it deals with real-life people and not some photoshopped starlet. Social networking is a great social tool when used in moderation and with a good amount of common sense.

Just as sharing a picture of starving children on a social networking site won’t fill up their empty stomach, young adults seeking false empathy from peers may lead to further body dissatisfaction and lowered self-esteem.

If all these aren’t enough, Facebook was in the news recently for all the wrong reasons as it publicly admitted to tampering with the emotional wellbeing of 689,003 unknowing users in order to see how emotional contagion could be controlled.

The survey was done to see how to spread, or avoid the spread of its users’ feelings en masse. So next time you are in the slightest emotional turmoil, remember the golden rule: “Face it, don’t Facebook it”.

- Jerin Jacob is an Indian business development manager based in Ajman.