Youth Voices: A Guide to Staying Grounded Online
By: Alice, PACT Youth Council Member
Self-love. Loving myself has become an ever increasingly hard task for me with the picture-perfect expectations the online world has on young teenagers, and I’m sure that many youth my age can resonate with me. We should recognize how vulnerable we can be to those harmful and unrealistic expectations, especially as we are still in our prime years of intellectual growth.
“I am a Queencard. You wanna be the Queencard?” - (G)I-DLE
As an all time K-pop consumer who doom scrolls K-pop content, I often keep up with those pop culture spaces and idols. It’s a regular occurrence for me to be subjected to the perfectly curated images and sights that leave no room for mistakes.
K-pop idols’ jobs consist of maintaining their flawless appearance, which may unintentionally reflect onto younger audiences in a negative way. So how can you prevent yourself from falling into that trap of comparison?
It’s important to understand that social media doesn’t necessarily have to be the root of the problem, and that there are preventative measures you can take to shield yourself against those idealistic pressures. A girl group I have been following since their debut, (G)I-DLE, has embodied this rebellious stance towards these societal norms and have become role models along the way for many of their fans, including me! Their songs are produced to embrace natural beauty, promote self-confidence, and combat against toxicity in the real world.
So these are the tips I have:
Have support systems offline and don’t glue yourself to the screen all day.
Create a feed that is beneficial for yourself.
Separate the filtered online world’s ideals from the imperfections of real life.
And lastly, I hope that you are all able to consume, but not be consumed by online and social media content. It’s normal to have insecurities at our age, but we are capable of finding our own narratives and we do not have to let our lives be dictated by those external influences.
A reminder to you all: you are a star, you are worth the world, and you are a Queencard.
“I hope that you are all able to consume, but not be consumed by online and social media content”
