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10,000 people every month google, "I'M I UGLY"?, there is a girl i once met her name is Emma, and unlike any teenage she want to be liked and fit in. now its Sunday night and she is getting ready ahead for the week ahead for school and she is slightly dreading, she is a little bit confused, because despite are mom's who kept telling her, all the time that she's beautiful, every day at school, someone tells her that she's ugly.
Now because of the difference in what are her mom tells her, and what are friends at school or her kids at school are telling her, she doesn't know who to believe, so she take a video of herself, and she post it on YOUTUBE, and she ask people to please leave their comments, "I'M I PRETTY OR I'M I UGLY?". so far Emma as received over 13,000 comments, some of them are so nasty that you just don't get to think about.
This is an average healthy looking teenage girl receiving this feedback. one of the most emotionly vulnerable time in her life... now thousand and thousand of people are posting videos like this online every day like Emma, mostly teenage girls reaching out in this way, now you may ask, "what is leading them to do this?". well, today teenagers are rarely online, they are under pressure to be online and available at all times. talking, messaging, liking, commenting, sharing, posting and it never ends.
Never before have we been so connected, so continuously, so instantaneously, so young and as one mom once told me, it like there is a party in their bed room every night, there is simply no privacy. and the social precious that go along with that are relentless. this always on environment is training our kids to value themselve with some amount of number of likes they get and the type of comments they receive. there is no separation between online and off line life, what's real or what isn't. it is really hard to tell the difference between, and it is also really hard to tell the difference from what is authentic and what is digitally manipulated. i have learnt so far, that in life if you actually want to make a difference you actually have to do something, and we have learnt that they are three key ways:
1. The first is we have to educate for body confidence:
We have to help our teenagers to develop strategies to be able to overcome and build their self esteem. now the good news is that there are many programs available to do this. the bad news is, that most of them don't work. i even think that most of the programs often make the situation worst so we need to make sure that the programs that our kids are receiving are not only having a positive impact but also having a loss impact as well.
2. Be a better role models:
We need to start judging people for what they do and not what they look like. And we can all start by taking responsibility for the types of pictures and comments that we post on our own social networks. We can compliment
people based on their efforts and their actions and not based on their appearances.
3. Work together:
We all need to work together as community as government and as business. to really change this culture of ours so that our kids grow up valuing their whole self. right now how culture is obsession with image is holding us all back, but let show our kids the truth, let show them that the way you look is just one part of your identity. and that the truth is that we love them for who they are and what they do and how they make us feel. let each and every one of us change the way we talk, comparing ourselves to other people. and let work together as a communities, so that the happy little one year old of today become a confident change maker of tomorrow.