Written by Cloey Green
When I was twelve years old, something inside me changed. I used to be a happy go lucky kid, but then I started looking at other girls around me and began to think, “she is so pretty, she is so smart, and she is so skinny.” I looked at myself negatively and thought I am none of those! I struggled a lot with these negative thoughts running through my head. Later, I was so overwhelmed with them, that I talked to my parents and they helped me love myself again.
I tell you this story for two reasons. One, people are constantly comparing themselves to others. Two, because people are comparing themselves, they have no more self-love. They keep self degrading themselves for what they aren’t and they don’t realize that they are special, too.
Let me tell you the process of self degradation, as what happened to me:
Comparing self to others
Comparison turns to jealousy
Jealousy turns to depression
Depression can lead to other problems
Now I am not saying that comparing is bad. Sometimes it is good, because it can push us to strive to be better. I have compared myself to others and saw what I needed to improve. But too much can be more self destructive than self improvement.
Now what causes comparison? For me, people would talk about how much they weighed or what they do for exercise and exercise shows when they talked about people who have lost a certain amount of weight. But the main cause is social media.
On tandfonline.com, an article called Social Comparison as the Thief of Joy, was published on Jan. 6th, 2017, was written by Dian A.de Vries, who works at the Department of Youth and Family, Utrecht University in the Netherlands, and A. Martha Moller who works in the Amsterdam school of communication research, University of Amsterdam, Netherlands, wrote that comparing oneself to others can create depressive attitudes. The study brought forth 126 participants between the ages of 18 and 30, they were asked to post a selfie of themselves, like positive and neutral selfies or to not take any selfies, to see the comparison of the participants for how they changed with either one. There are six pictures of people, two of three, in the article.
One of each person’s is a positive one and one is a neutral. The positive pictures had gone through filters in their phones to make the space around them and themselves look brighter and more attractive. Because of this, it was easier to make it say, happy day!# life is good or anything positive about themselves for their image. But the neutral ones didn’t go through a filter and they were completely honest with their pictures. They said things like, today was so boring, I didn’t get anything done.
The ones who were asked to post no posts, didn’t even look at the posts on social media. The results of this study was that social comparison is depended on how people look on social media and around us.
That is why we compare. We look at someone who seems all happy and doesn’t have a care or worry in the world. But we don’t know what they are going through, all we see is what they are not.
Some people I know get on social media a lot and their temper is like really bad. One of my sisters used to have pinterest and she used to get angry. It got so bad, she chose to take it off our phone.
Social media isn’t all bad, though.
Some people need to have Facebook, Instagram, or any other social media for their businesses and just to talk to old friends who live far away. But even then, we need to limit our time on social media to prevent comparison.
Even depression and anxiety, health problems can occur when people compare. Even suicide if it just gets to be too much.
CDC.gov published an article called Adult Obesity Facts in October 2017, written by Craig M. Hales, who has an M.D. medical degree, wrote that 39.8% U.S. Adults were affected with obesity in 2015-2016 and that obesity can cause other related diseases, like heart disease, stroke, diabetes, and other dangerous diseases.
How does this occur? When people have emotional injuries they want to turn to something they will take away the pain. Those people may turn to drugs, alcohol, or in this case junk food.
On theovernight.org, they published an article with no author’s name, in 2018, and CBS.com, they published an article by Jim Axelrod, a journalist for CBS.com, in Sept. 2018, called Parents Blindsided by Daughters Tragic Suicide Hopes to help others, both say that suicide is the tenth cause of death in America for all ages. But it is the second leading cause of death for ages 15 to 24. And every year, at least 800,000 people die from suicide. That is one death every 40 seconds.
This is the result when people don’t love themselves, and they think there is any other way out of their pain.
You aren’t going to amount to anyone. Hey, I learned this too. I found out I didn’t amount to anyone but me. So you only amount to YOU.
But you can’t just love yourself, you have to be your BEST self. Do something with your life. Make your dreams come true. Make you the person you were made to be. Don’t just sit there thinking about how great you are, you have to DO to great around those around you, because maybe they are struggling.
Don’t sit around wallowing all through life about what qualities you do and don’t have, and do something with the qualities you do have. If there is something you don’t like about yourself, don’t put yourself down, strengthen that weakness or change yourself.
If you fail at something, don’t put yourself into self degradation, but just learn from your mistakes. Because in reality, people make them every day, so you are not alone. Even those who seem like they are perfect, they just might be putting on a face so they seem alright.
What I say today can’t make you change immediately. You have to be your own change. And if you want to change how you look at yourself, begin right now, this moment, because nobody in your family, no friends, nobody in this room, only you.
This speech is to not put you down, but to help you find a way out and to see that people might just be putting on a face when they’re in despair underneath. I can’t make you change your ways or anyone else’s. I hope what I said makes you think about who you want to be and that you are a wonderful, amazing, and beautiful or handsome individual. Don’t let anyone change that about you. But the worst person that can put you down is yourself. There is a light in you that needs to be brought out and you can help others bring theirs out.
So be a light and just be yourself.
Thank you
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