What’s it like to be a teenage girl in 2020?
Tags: Teenager, Social Media, Teenage Girl, 2020

Only a very select few of the population will actually ever get to experience being a teenager in 2020, nevermind being a teenage girl. I’m writing this to give those that are unfortunate and fortunate enough not to be one, the opportunity to catch just a glimpse of what life is like for us…

Part 1-Social Media

Well for starters we have social media constantly with us, it’s a blessing and a curse don’t get me wrong, but what does it actually feel like? Imagine a constant nagging at the back of your mind to ‘check Jessica’s insta to make sure she hasn’t posted that ugly pic of me on her story’ or to ‘make sure that I’ve opened all my recent snaps, don’t want people thinking I see myself as a celebrity after all’. There are positives and negatives to it definitely like I know I wouldn’t have met some of my closest friends if I hadn’t have added them from a Snapchat mention, but at the same time I also know that I wouldn’t nearly have a panic attack every time I see that one girls name pop up as typing.

I also know that a lot of us have been pressured into sending boys things we don’t want to via social media and we’ve been made feel like we’re ‘weak’ or ‘a slut’ for giving in to their horny demands. I’m gonna put it out here right now, it is not your place to say that to someone, you do not know what it feels like to be a victim of manipulation. To put it in simple terms, imagine you’re inside a collapsing house with someone you love, you can either save that person or yourself, otherwise you both die. The pressure you’ve been put under in that situation is an upscaled version of what it’s like, in a lot of situations, to be pressured into sending ‘nudes’.

Me and many other girls will admit to wishing they looked like someone they saw on social media, and instead of promoting being comfortable with ourselves and our individuality, the big social media companys profit from our self-consciousness. We’ve constantly had a very specific and hard to achieve beauty standard etched into our heads from an early age and we’re under the impression that if we don’t look that that, we’ll be unwanted or outcast. The thing is, if we all looked like the select few that are ‘beautiful’ then the beauty standard would change to become even more exclusive and hard to achieve. Regardless of this, we still wish we looked like ‘Charli damelio’ or ‘Ariana Grande’, even though we know that physically impossible without the use of plastic surgery.

Plastic surgery is linked heavily to social media. We are told that it’s a negative thing by our parents, grandparents, aunties and uncles and anyone of an older generation however the big social media influencers tell us it’s a great thing and use it to sell their products to us. Take Kylie Jenner for example, she sells a lipstick and gives the customer the impression that if they buy this product they will look like her. If you ignore the fact that you’d have to have thirty or so surgeries to look vaguely similar to her, then yeah with those surgeries and the lipstick you probably will look similar to her. Another example of an influencer that has used their platform is the tiktok star Charli Damelio. Charli had a nose job back in July and instead of staying in bed and recovering, she created a vlog to post to her audience of mostly young children and teenagers. This again backed up the thought that plastic surgery can make you look pretty as ‘oh well my favorite tiktokker got a nose job so why don’t I?’

In simple terms the people in power have failed us, massively.