Status Updates, Thinspo, Fitspo and bragging about pizza: social media and self-esteem

Posted on August 4, 2011 by Hugo Schwyzer

My Thursday column at Healthy is the New Skinny looks at the impact of social media on young women’s body image; check out Status Updates and “Thinspo”. Excerpt:

How often do the people you know on Facebook “check in” at the gym? How often do they share how far they ran? Or how they’re doing on their diet, or on their “Insanity” workout plan? When I asked for stories on Facebook, dozens of young people wrote me to share their experiences reading their friends’ food-and-diet updates. Some wrote that seeing other people working out was “inspiring”, while others wrote it was “depressing” or “triggering”. One of my former students wrote “I can’t stand getting on Facebook in the morning and hearing about all the exercise my friends have already done before I’ve even brushed my teeth. It makes me feel like a failure.”

Several wrote of a common phenomenon: the girls who seemed most likely to update about the delicious, fattening foods that they’d eaten or were planning to eat were the girls whose bodies were already close to the idea. “Amber” wrote: “It seems like only skinny and pretty girls get to talk about the burgers and Pizookies they’ve eaten. It’s like they’re showing off that they can pig out and get away with it. They get all these comments that say things like ‘You’re so lucky to be able to eat like that and still look great.’ It’s like they’re fishing for compliments in a weird roundabout way. Amber, who has struggled with bulimia and describes herself as a size 14, remarks, “I’m not angry at the girls who write about food all the time. But it definitely bothers me, as I don’t think I could write about what I’ve eaten and get away with it.”

Others I heard from talked about the way in which positive reinforcement on photos or status updates could be triggering. “Mandy” said that when she lost a lot of weight and put up new, flattering photos, she got a huge outpouring of compliments. “Everytime someone told me how great I looked, it made me more fearful of gaining the weight back. Instead of making me feel good, the compliments pushed me to diet more to make sure I stayed skinny.” Mandy, like most young people, carefully chose flattering photos for Facebook. She got the praise she wanted, but instead of providing reassurance it just pushed her to more unhealthy dieting.

Read the whole thing.

And check out a similar take from Rachel Simmons, author of “Odd Girl Out”.

Cognitive dissonance, conflict, and civility on Facebook

Posted on April 27, 2010 by Hugo Schwyzer

A few people have defriended me on Facebook recently. Before I explain why, a bit of background: I have well over 2000 “friends” on Facebook, ranging from family members to students to blog readers. I’ve been “on” the site for just over three years, and have found it an indispensable tool for keeping in touch with old friends — and for sharing media content (blog posts, videos, articles) that I find useful or interesting. Those of us who have public platforms (even if they are small platforms) are social influencers; it seems sensible to use the platforms we have to promote causes near and dear to our hearts.

Of course, not all of my Facebook friends share my views. I may be a staunch liberal, but I’ve got acquaintances (and loved ones) who span the spectrum from neo-Stalinist to Christian Reconstructionist and almost everything in between. When I post about hot-button issues — as I did in the aftermath of the George Tiller assassination last May, folks whose views are diametrically opposed to my own sometimes feel compelled to weigh in. And things can get very hostile very fast.

Blogging permits anonymity. I happen to blog under my own name; many don’t. Most of my commenters use first names only, or pseudonyms. But my Facebook friends are all real people whose names I know, whose pictures I can see, whose lives (at least online) are open to me as mine is to them. One can’t anonymously “troll” on Facebook as one can on a blog. But rather than turning down the temperature of the discussions, this intimacy makes the political arguments all the more intense. Much of it takes the form of “I cannot believe someone I love and respect can be so obstinately wrong”. The desire to show a “friend” the error of his or her ways is often exponentially greater within a closed social network than it is in the more open world of the blogosphere. I lost four friends on Facebook after I declared Dr. Tiller to be a martyr, and noted my open and unequivocal support for late-term abortion. Emotions ran high all around.

It’s tempting to avoid using Facebook to advance causes. It can just be a site for sharing photos and updates with friends. But I am a political creature. To pretend to be apolitical, to pretend that issues around gender justice and animal rights aren’t central to my being, is to present an entirely false image of who it is that I am. I suspect that a great many people, left and right and in between, would say the same. To paraphrase the good Lord, there ain’t much point in hiding one’s light under a bushel. And so the trick is to be an honest, open, loving, but authentic advocate for one’s deepest beliefs — and to do that advocacy in a way that engages and influences others, while respecting their right to disagree.

My Facebook “wall” is not a freewheeling forum for the discussion of ideas. It is my bulletin board, reflecting my views of the world on which others are free to comment — but not free to denigrate. For example, I noted several times recently my support for the National Network of Abortion Funds, including my contributions to various teams in their annual fundraising bowl-a-thon. I have made it clear that comments like “baby killers!” are unwelcome and unacceptable. I don’t go to the Facebook pages of my right-leaning friends and write “woman-hater!” underneath their posts linking to pro-life sites, after all.

The challenge for those of us who use social networking sites to communicate our personal and political selves (for many of us, those are inextricably woven together) is finding ways to practice integrity and civility in our exchanges with those whom we disagree. In the case of Facebook, because we are interacting primarily with those whom we have chosen as our friends and colleagues, the stakes are much higher than they are on a more anonymous platform. Facebook allows us to discover which of our friends — often much to our astonishment — hold views we consider objectionable or bizarre. To some extent, it’s a regular exercise in cognitive dissonance, as we struggle to reconcile our fondness for a person with our horror at her or his views. I know I give plenty of folks opportunity for just that, both here and on my Facebook page.

We live in a politically-charged era. I am proud of how many of my students are engaged. I am proud of those who fight for the causes I believe in, but I’m also proud of the integrity and passion displayed by those who hold radically different views. Having come of age in the politically apathetic early 1980s, part of the generation known as “Reagan Youth”, I am deeply impressed by the savvy, intensity, and commitment of those born a quarter century later. I am struck, too, by how many young activists do manage to maintain friendships (on Facebook and elsewhere) with partisans on the other side. I am learning much from them.

“I adore you; you confound me”: of old friends, Facebook, and ideological differences

Posted on November 2, 2009 by Hugo Schwyzer

When I first went on Facebook a few years ago, most of my friends were my students and “youth group kids”; I was the oldest person I knew on the site. Today, a third of my 1700-odd friends and contacts on FB are my age or older, and I’ve found it a particularly useful tool for connecting with old acquaintances from my childhood and adolescence. I suspect my 25th high school reunion, coming up next year, will be planned using Facebook.

On Facebook, I often post links to news stories and opinion pieces which reflect my views on gender, sexuality, faith, animal rights and so forth. My friends are able to comment on the stories. Since my friends — and I use that noun in its traditional sense — run the gamut politically, sexually, and religiously, the debates are quite heated. And things have gotten particularly intense since “Leigh” started commenting. Leigh is a conservative Republican through and through, and not afraid to “mix it up” with my many liberal buddies on Facebook. Some folks have written to me in wonder, expressing disbelief that someone like Leigh and I could be friends.

I’m well aware that the capacity to be friends with folks who hold radically divergent views is a virtue made possible by privilege. For example, I have friends who are strongly opposed to marriage equality for gays and lesbians; they fight against a cause I champion. But because I’m a man married to a woman, their views (while exasperating and troubling) don’t represent a direct threat to my happiness. If I were a man who longed to marry another man but couldn’t, I might be less cheerful about opening my Facebook page, my heart, and my home to folks whose views I consider a real threat to my happiness. My extended family has been one that has been fortunate enough to embrace civility, even cordiality, towards one’s ideological opponents as a virtue. White folks in the middle and upper-middle classes have the luxury of seeing political disagreements as fascinating topics for a rousing argument rather than life and death. That cheerful willingness not only to overlook, but even celebrate those disagreements was something I was raised to believe was a sign of wisdom, of a capacity to put friendship and family over partisanship or faith. I still believe that, but acknowledge that that capacity has as much to do with race and class as it does with virtue.

In any event, while I do moderate fairly heavily here on the blog, where folks I don’t know can and do comment, a more free-wheeling atmosphere prevails on my Facebook page, where Leigh has crossed verbal swords with more than one of my other friends.

Leigh (not her real name) and I went to high school together. We were particularly close our junior year, when we were lab partners in Richard Fletcher’s legendary Wildlfe and Ecology course. Leigh and I talked about everything together at 16, and did our best to stay in touch in the years that followed. Our lives, as it turned out, followed somewhat similar trajectories: we were both divorced multiple times, we both struggled early and often with addiction to alcohol and drugs. And we both were fortunate enough to get sober relatively young; Leigh and I each have “clean time” measured in double-digit years. In sobriety, we both became marathon runners and endurance athletes; unbeknownst to the other, we each ran our personal best times the same year and at more or less the same pace. And in our journey towards sobriety, we both became Christians, born again as adults.

Leigh now lives in the mountains, in a small and isolated — albeit very beautiful — community. She’s a first-rate outdoorswoman, single, still an athlete despite battles against rheumatoid arthritis. And she’s also become, in no small part as a result of her experiences as well as her upbringing, very right-wing. When we write to each other, as we do fairly regularly on Facebook, we enjoy our shared reminiscences immensely. It’s so good to have friends who’ve known you for so long, longer than spouses and colleagues and the like. Without the entangled intimacy of family, but with the perspective of decades, old acquaintances remind us of how far we’ve traveled, of obstacles overcome , and of our own impetuous, often foolish, but still loveable youthful selves. But Leigh and I also have spoken of faith, sobriety, running — and, at least since last year’s election, a great deal about politics. When it comes to the former things, we are of one mind; on the latter, we could not disagree more. Continue reading →

More on Facebook and social influence

Posted on March 3, 2009 by Hugo Schwyzer

As I wrote a few days ago, I’m easing into the Twitter thing, though with little of the enthusiasm so far I have for Facebook. The latter site has been a surprising joy, not least because it has reconnected me with so many friends from my high school and college days. It’s nice to see how others have turned out, and frankly, nice for me to show some of my old friends that I turned out okay. A lot of those folks who knew me in the ’80s and ’90s weren’t sure I’d make it to forty, much less be alive and happy and settled and a Dad. I’m glad to be able to let them know that by grace and therapy and stubbornness, I pulled right on through.

In any case, I have something like 1300 friends on Facebook these days. Perhaps 500 or so are students (current and former) at PCC, the rest are friends and relatives acquaintances from other walks of life. Perhaps 150 or so are people whom I’ve never met — but whom I “know” through blogging or through animal rights activism.

In addition to the chance to reconnect and stay connected (something my ENFP self likes very much), I appreciate the platform Facebook gives its users. When I post a link (such as the Heather Corinna piece on older boyfriends two posts belows this one), it shows up in the newsfeeds of all my friends. Dozens, perhaps hundreds of my friends then click on the link. Many of my Facebook friends don’t read my blog regularly, as visiting blog sites is too taxing. Popping my links and status updates in their “news feeds” on Facebook enables me to share content and ideas in a way that allows my friends to see what I’m up to (and what I think they should read) without requiring them to be active followers of my writing. They then have a chance to repost the link, and as the kids say these days “the content goes viral.”

From an activist standpoint (and I consider myself an activist), modern technology (Twitter, Facebook, etcetera) offers new platforms for reaching large numbers of people. Those of us who have a higher profile (in my case, because I’ve been blogging for so long and teaching for far longer) can thus leverage our “friends” and “followers” in the hopes of driving the discussion in the direction we’d like to see it go.

One goal of social networking is to stay in touch. Another, for some people, is to find job, relationship, or hook-up opportunities. And for me, one particularly happy goal of using social networking is nudging friends and associates towards certain sites, possibilities, ideas that I think valuable. After all, in this world we “buy” into other people first and foremost. And once we’ve bought into someone (to the extent that we are curious about their passions and interests,) we can be encouraged to follow them down at least some of the paths they choose to take.

I make no secret of my veganism, my social liberalism, my passion for fashion, my strong Christian faith, and above all else but the last of these, my feminism. Few if any of my friends and acquaintances will share each of those interests — but if I leverage my standing as a teacher and a blogger and a minor public figure through Facebook and Twitter to carry out the Great Commission of bringing folks towards these passions, then I think I’m doing something valuable.

(Many new ideas have come to me from my Facebook friends as well — the teacher can be taught, as it should be.)

And besides, it’s fun.

A note on Facebook and boundaries

Posted on October 17, 2008 by Hugo Schwyzer

In web-related news, the BBC reports:

A man has been jailed for life for stabbing his wife to death over a posting she made on the social networking site Facebook.
Wayne Forrester, 34, told police he was devastated that his wife Emma, also 34, had changed her online profile to “single” days after he had moved out.

It’s a horrible story, but it’s got me thinking.

I’ve been on Facebook since June 2007. My “friends” range from current and former students to many and assorted family members, former youth group kids, colleagues, fellow bloggers, old pals from high school and college, friends from the animal rights community, Kabbalah students, and blog-readers from around the world. I love Facebook for reconnecting me with old companions and enabling me to stay in easy and rapid touch with so many people. I was on Myspace several years ago, and left it for many reasons, detailed here. Facebook seems “cleaner” in every sense , and I appreciate that I don’t feel vaguely like a “dirty old man”. Fully a third of my 900+ contacts on Facebook are older than I am; the ranks of the middle-aged on Facebook seem much more noticeable than on other social networking sites.

Social networking sites like Facebook and Myspace are tremendously valuable to the “taken” and the “single” alike. But for those of us who are married or in other sorts of committed relationships, it’s critical that we be aware of the many ways in which these sites can encourage flirtation. Especially because of my status as a professor and youth leader, I try to be cognizant of the signals my words and images on Facebook send. It’s been a learning curve — on my old blog, I posted pictures of me from races I had run. Given that I tend to run shirtless any race where the temperature is above 55 degrees, several of the photos were of my pale, sweat-soaked form during and after various marathons. What I wanted to project was athleticism, but was told by quite a few people that the images came across as vaguely sexual — as if I were trolling for affirmation at best, and perhaps much more at worst. I took those images down.

The kerfuffle over the shirtless running pics taught me an important lesson about the gap between intent and perception. I ought to have known better. In other instances, particularly about male-female communication in contemporary culture, I’ve written and lectured and led workshops about that very same, frequently problematic gap. And given that I have a past, pre-conversion history of ethical boundary violations with my students, I ought to have been especially attuned to the subtle ways in which I am capable of deceiving myself as to my own real agenda. I needed some trusted friends to hold me accountable in this “new medium” of social networking. Continue reading →