My group and I interviewed Erin Eichenstein on her work at marketing for instagram and Facebook. She talked to us about how social media can we damaging to girls and everyone in general and how herself and everyone working for Instagram and Facebook are trying to move the platforms in a more positive direction. One of the things that stood out to me is when she was talking about how many tests each ad goes through to be put on the platforms so that no one is being targeted by a negative ad.

Erin said due to covid teens and kids have been on social media and on their phone way more due to covid. This gives more room for kids to be shown a negative ad which can affect a large majority of teens mental health. If social media apps don’t take a stand to better their environment then everyone is going to continue to get affected by the toxicity of social media.

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My Social Justice group and I went to the Paley Center to learn about body Image and how that concept has been shown on TV over the years. My group and I sat in a theater and watched a compilation of videos. Some videos were uplifting for girls and showed how we are not weak and don’t need a male figure to be the strong and dominant person on TV. And then the other videos included teenage girls acting explicit in music videos and in TV shows. They were being shown as “sexy” and “hot” when they were very young.

We had a long conversation about this compilation of videos and we talked about how girls are portrayed in the media. It’s really great to see how some shows on TV give girls a powerful role instead of them being just a pretty face. We also watched a video that shows different children being asked to “run like a girl”. The older kids and mostly the boys showed themselves running slow and in a weak way and when the question was asked to younger girls they ran fast and showed the viewers how girls run. It was inspiring to see these young girls not listen to the Stereotype that is put on all girls.

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We interviewed Lauren Smolar on her experience being apart of the Nation Eating Disorder Association. She answered our questions about how to deal with the ups and downs of social media and a way to use social media in a healthy way. She explained that social media is a great place for people with similar views to interact with each other but it also can be used negatively when used to make people feel bad about them selves and can trigger and eating disorder or insecurities.

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This week my group will present an overview on our SJ topic. I am not nervous at all because I have put a lot of effort into my presentation. Our group works great together and i’ve learned a lot. Here is something I shared about my topic after researching about my topic, “Because so many of us are on social media, we are all greatly affected by the things we scroll past every day. People trying to promote and live up to certain body types as well as shaming those who don’t have that body type is having an extremely negative impact on young girls and women. Since our group members all experience this first hand, we are devoted to learning more about it and coming up with potential solutions.”

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