Facebook: Too Much Time Spent Social Networking Crushes Young Women's Self Esteem

It's easy to get sucked in to the one-upmanship game on social media, only posting your best pics and posing for a hundred selfies before finding the one that's perfect.

But while it might seem harmless (if time consuming), spending time on Facebook really could be doing more harm to our self esteem than we realise. Particularly for young women and girls in their teens.

New research has found that the more time teenage girls spend on the social networking site, the more likely they are to suffer from low self-esteem and develop an eating disorder.

“While time spent on Facebook had no relation to eating disorders, it did predict worse body image among participants,” explained Dr Petya Eckler, from the University of Strathclyde. And low body image is a precursor to eating disorders.

“Participants in social media are people we know," she added. These comparisons are more relevant and hit closer to home, yet they may be just as unrealistic."

Elizabeth Kesses, writer of The Ugly Little Girl trilogy, who's working with Dove on its Self-Esteem Project commented:

"Selfies and all the rules that go with them - hand on waist to look slimmer, camera from above to avoid double chin, legs apart to have the gap - are putting even more pressure on girls to look perfect.

"Initiatives like Dove's are trying to cure this obsession with image by encouraging girls to be themselves, to accept their curly hair, freckles, glasses and appreciate who they are. No amount of likes on Facebook will make you feel good if you don't 'like' yourself."

"Sixty per cent of girls say that others glam photos make them feel bad. Even though they are posed, pouty even airbrushed versions of the reality, young girls believe they are reality which makes them feel ugly and not good enough.

"Social networks aren't going away so we need antidotes to low self-esteem. For instance the ‘self-esteemie’ - a photo taken with #nopout #nopose, that could be taken in a mirror to celebrate your unique beauty. The no make-up selfies in support of cancer were a good example of positive content."