The article in the url below discusses a video launched over the summer as part of the "Dove Self-esteem Project," called Toxic Influence. The video focuses on the effects social media can have on young girls and, in particular, highlights the extent to which neither they, nor their mothers, have any idea about the content to which they are being exposed:
The article explains what happens in the video:
"In the video, one mom says she thinks social media can be good or bad, while another says it can be confidence-building; one girl says she thinks it has had a mostly positive impact on her life. The girls are then told to start scrolling on their phones. Images appear on the big screen, quick clips of TikTok-ish influencers touting weird beauty hacks. 'Most parents underestimate how harmful toxic beauty advice can be on social media,' the text says. Then, out of left field: 'Using face-mapping technology, we put highly toxic advice into the mouths of their moms.' Now the five mothers appear on the movie screen, digitally morphed into the people doling out grotesque recommendations: how you are never too young for 'baby Botox'; how at-home lip-injection kits are so amazing; how there are powders you can ingest to skip meals; how to straighten your teeth with a nail file. 'Skinny,' the last toxic influencer/deepfake mom tells us, 'is never finished.' 'You wouldn't say that to your daughter,' the text announces. 'But she still hears it online, every day.' The mothers are shocked, the daughters contrite."
The point of the article (and video) is not necessarily to highlight the big picture extent to which social media affects young girls' self-esteem, but the extent to which it does that subtly so that, for the most part, people are not aware of the changes that are happening. The author in the article writes this in her concluding paragraph:
"Yesterday I picked up my 10-year-old's old turquoise iPod Touch to see what was on it. I found a few selfies she took — as unsmiling as Morticia Addams, as the kids like it these days. I also found some chatty videos she made of herself painting seashells, copying the style of her favorite arts-and-crafts YouTuber. Every so often, she would bat her tangled hair back with splayed hands, the way people with long nails do. My daughter does not have long nails. Her favorite YouTuber does. The amount of ingested culture in this tiny gesture stopped me short. This was nothing a feed 'detoxed' of teeth-filers would address. It was bigger: everything she sees, all the time, everywhere, an open fire hydrant of messages — including, no matter how much they would prefer to seem above it, Dove's."
Take care
David
David Chandler
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Soft Soap
By Mireille Silcoff
July 24, 2022
The New York Times Sunday Magazine
Late Edition – Final
7-10
