Why are brands becoming increasingly conscious about the Envrironment?

One major area of our lives that is affected heavily by social media is how we feel about our body and appearance. A quick look on Instagram hashtags shows 1.3 million #bodyconfidence tags and 14.5 million #bodypositive tags as users try to take back control over feeling good about their pictures.

We look into this further with Isle Of Paradise, retailers of self tan drops.

The state of body confidence

It’s not new information that media can have damaging effects on our self-esteem. So many of us have learnt to feel that way through television and magazine covers from a young age. At one point, we were all blissfully unaware of how we looked as children, rocking that second-skin swimsuit without a care in the world. Over time, this changed, and we became aware of things by comparing ourselves to others. This comparison has simply been made much more accessible at our fingertips.

How content we are with our bodies

We sent out a survey which got 459 answers, looking into body confidence and social media in men and women.

Unsurprisingly, the data reports that men aged 18–24 and women aged 25–34 are the least confident. It’s likely that Generation Z and millennials are feeling the least confident due to growing up with the heavy use of social media and have probably been victims of body comparison and feeling negative about themselves as a result. Younger people certainly feel the pressures of looking attractive and fitting the aesthetic trends at the time the most.

Media representation

From the data, it seems that social media impacts the body confidence of both genders, with 85% of women and 42% of men agreeing. 18–24-year olds were the most impacted compared to 25–34-year-old men.

The main reasons respondents believed were the root cause of negativity were Instagram, edited photos from influencers, lack of body type variation shown in marketing, bullying online, magazines, a lack of diversity and inclusion.