Since the year 2000, with the onset of the internet as a global communication network characterized by rapid spread and accessibility, along with continuously evolving technological innovations offering beauty, creativity, and connectivity, a generation was born, often referred to as the “digital generation.” This came amidst the pre-internet generation known as the “immigrants.” This global network provided an environment known as cyberspace, where humans exist, influence, and are influenced by interactions and adaptations, forming what is known as the “cyber personality.” Each of these personalities holds a concept that reflects the behaviors and emotions of this “cyber or digital human” in Arabic language.
In simple communication concepts, for every sender, there is a receiver with a message initially text-based, which evolved through stages into audio, then multimedia, and has now settled into our era of producing personal content through synchronous and asynchronous communication and live broadcasts, marking the advent of what is known as digital media. The protagonists are either individuals or media entities who benefit from social networking programs to connect with millions of users through smartphones, offering individual and exclusive content to recipients. This has led to a significant challenge in addressing educational, psychological, and social phenomena.
One of these phenomena is “Body Image Dissatisfaction.”
Body image is an important component of a healthy personality. It affects an individual’s self-esteem and, consequently, their self-concept. A person’s attitude toward their body image influences their behavior and interaction with others. In this scenario, an individual might engage in interaction and sharing with others, thereby caring for and maintaining their appearance, which boosts their self-esteem. Conversely, if an individual’s body image suffers, their interaction with others declines, leading them to avoid social situations that cause discomfort, thereby increasing their negative feelings about their body image.
Since body image is a component of personality, it reflects a core issue within that personality known as self-image, which refers to how a person views themselves and how they compare to others in terms of appearance, general demeanor, and behavior. From this image, an overall impression of self-concept forms, whether positive or negative. A negative self-image often leads to low self-esteem.
Psychologists identify three components of the body image concept:
- The perceptual component: “How you perceive yourself.”
- The subjective component: It focuses on several topics such as satisfaction, preoccupation, or concern, and anxiety about body image.
- The behavioral component: It reflects avoidance of situations that cause discomfort, exhaustion, or harassment related to physical appearance.
It is emphasized that our self and cyber personality positively or negatively impact our real-life personality and concept of self. Here, non-adaptive behaviors begin in response to feelings of dissatisfaction, anxiety, or depression that surface due to these influences.
Digital media plays a significant and powerful role in influencing body image among men and women, causing them to engage in social comparison between body images presented through digital media and the real-life images of their bodies. Additionally, digital media influences body image beliefs in males differently than in females, often creating specific stereotypes for both genders. This poses threats to familial cohesion, where a husband might form a stereotypical image of a women, influencing his expressions toward his wife as a comparison. This affects the wife’s feelings, sowing the seeds of body image dissatisfaction, which is referred to as others’ evaluation of self. However, this evaluation stems from a cyber self evaluating a real self, creating a personality in the wife that is troubled, seeking perfection, and leading to the pursuit of cosmetic surgery content creators, eventually applying these surgeries obsessively but never reaching satisfaction due to real self-distortion, and trouble in the husband, an obsession with finding beauty, becoming addicted to transitioning between social media environments in search for the pleasure of beauty.
Neither stops at a rational limit! Their journey toward psychological treatment begins due to anxiety and depression.
This is especially significant given the impact of digital media on body image, especially among adolescents.
A study revealed no statistically significant correlation between age and satisfaction with body image, meaning that individuals of all ages, whether digital or immigrant adolescents and adults, are affected. This is where the behavior of hiding behind beautification filters provided by some visual social platforms began, making appearing in a genuine form rare on many occasions.
There are even human rights organizations that have urged some celebrities to appear without filters to address the phenomenon of body image dissatisfaction in Western societies, which has driven some individuals to attempt suicide.
The conflict here is between two personalities, one cyber and the other real; hence, there must be widespread awareness to avoid slipping behind the desires of this cyber personality and its self-concept, and what we are essentially as a personality and self to accept, respect, and appreciate it since it is the one that endures. In contrast, the cyber personality only appears temporarily in its most beautiful disguise, as we practice the trick of denial to convince ourselves and perceive that we are indeed like that, but in reality, “You are just a filter.”
Comparative behavior generates compulsive behavior in adolescents and adults due to exposure to false and temporary role models presented on social media platforms, which extends to their real lives, leading them to live bleak lives due to dissatisfaction and unattainability of a satisfactory body image, reflecting a cognitive distortion—a mismatch between what their true self-image is and the ideal image they aspire to, drawn in their imaginations.
Be a strong firewall for your body image and trust in yourself; beauty is relative. Facial features—the eyes, nose, mouth—and body structures vary in their biological composition, in height, weight, and bone mass, created by God in this image.
Do not conform to all that is shown and said. Employ critical thinking towards what is displayed; why? How? Will you realize that the ultimate aim is purely financial gain, or it is marketing, or to gain viewership, or to undermine your confidence as psychological warfare against the individual’s psychological health, which carries over to the health of the society in which you live across its various real environments in general!
