Abstract
This study explores teenage girls' narrations of the relationship between self-presentation and peer comparison on social media in the context of beauty. Social media provide new platforms that manifest media and peer influences on teenage girls' understanding of beauty towards an idealized notion. Through 24 in-depth interviews, this study examines secondary school girls' self-presentation and peer comparison behaviors on social network sites where the girls posted self-portrait photographs or “selfies” and collected peer feedback in the forms of “likes,” “followers,” and comments. Results of thematic analysis reveal a gap between teenage girls' self-beliefs and perceived peer standards of beauty. Feelings of low self-esteem and insecurity underpinned their efforts in edited self-presentation and quest for peer recognition. Peers played multiple roles that included imaginary audiences, judges, vicarious learning sources, and comparison targets in shaping teenage girls' perceptions and presentation of beauty. Findings from this study reveal the struggles that teenage girls face today and provide insights for future investigations and interventions pertinent to teenage girls’ presentation and evaluation of self on social media.
Introduction
During the transition to adulthood, teenage girls aged 12–16 years old experience emotional changes in intrapersonal and interpersonal development as well as physical changes such as gaining weight suddenly and transitioning from a girl's body to a grown woman's body (Labre and Walsh-Childers, 2003 and Vandenbosch and Eggermont, 2012). With acute self-consciousness, teenage girls seek to present a good image of themselves but are also anxious about how other people perceive them (Rosenbaum, 1993). In these transitory years the girls' self-presentation of beauty and concern about other people's perceptions of them play critical roles in developing their identities and self-esteem (Caspi, 2000 and Martin and Kennedy, 1993).
Social media present new interactive platforms in which self-presentation and peer influences interact to co-construct the standards of beauty (Meier & Gray, 2014). Social network sites (SNSs) such as Instagram and Facebook have facilitated peer comparison about looks and image among teenagers (Mascheroni, Vincent, & Jimenez, 2015). More teenage girls nowadays engage in online self-presentation such as posting self-portrait photographs or “selfies” of themselves and sharing “outfit-of-the-day” photos to observe and compare themselves against their peers (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010). At the same time, media images of ideal beauty permeate veins of social media through information sharing and through teenage girls’ projection of idealized beauty standards onto the content they post (boyd, 2014). The ideal of thinness as beauty impacts and interacts with peer influences as teenage girls socialize on SNSs, present themselves, and have access to a plethora of peer opinions.
While SNSs provide new spaces that allow media depictions of idealized beauty and peer portrayals of beauty standards to interact, their impact on teenage girls' understanding and reproduction of the meanings of beauty has not been studied extensively. Much extant research on online self-presentation has focused on young adults' thought expression and image management through the presentation of written information (DeAndrea and Walther, 2011, Stern, 2007 and Toma, 2013). There has been little research on photo-based self-presentation on SNSs and its interplay with peer judgments and the negotiation of beauty (Mascheroni et al., 2015 and Meier and Gray, 2014). Hence, this study seeks to address this important gap in the extant literature. Through in-depth interviews, this study aims to uncover the meanings embedded in teenage girls’ use of selfies to present and compare themselves against others on SNSs and how the online interactions with peers reinforce their understanding and presentation of beauty.
. Conclusion
Focusing on the posting of selfies on Instagram, this study reveals how teenage girls negotiate their self-presentation efforts to achieve the standard of beauty projected by their age group. The study provides a deeper understanding of the tools – likes and followers – that are understood by teenage girls to be indicators of their beauty and self-worth. This study adds to the existing literature by revealing relationships among self-presentation, peer comparison, insecurity, and self-esteem and by uncovering meanings attributed to tools such as likes and followers. The insights gained from this study are useful in understanding the struggles that teenage girls face today and can be a reference and guiding tool for future studies investigating and intervening in teenage girls’ social networking practices.
