Social Media, Self-Esteem, and Gender: A Literature Review

This report presents an introduction and literature review examining the effects of social media on self-esteem and gender. It explores how social media usage has changed communication and influenced lifestyles, impacting human behavior and self-perception. The study investigates the psychological factors behind individuals' actions on social media, including the influence of self-esteem and gender on content creation and online behavior. The review synthesizes existing research, highlighting both positive and negative aspects of social media use, and explores how gender influences content preferences. The study hypothesizes that individuals with higher self-esteem will exhibit a more positive attitude toward social media, and aims to investigate the correlation between self-esteem and time spent on social media. It also references relevant studies and provides a rationale for the research, setting the stage for further investigation into these complex relationships.

Running Head: SOCIAL MEDIA
SOCIAL ESTEEM AND SOCIAL MEDIA
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author’s Note

1SOCIAL MEDIA
Social media is a common mode of entertainment for people in the modern age and it is
used by people from all age groups. It has altered the way people are communicating and
influencing their lifestyles due to the use of internet and social media. It changes the outlook of
people and evolves the human behavior that includes their self-esteem and gender. These
attributes affect their use of social media and how they present their life for other people.
Personal information is shared through mediums of blogs, videos and pictures. The reason this
study was conducted was to know about the attributes towards social media that how it is
affected by self-esteem and gender (Duffett, 2017). This study will explore the human
psychology and the factors behind an individual’s actions related to social media and its
influence. Researchers have found positive as well as negative attributes to use of social media
such as Facebook. The gender of an individual also affects their idea of using social media and
few studies show that their style of posting and the type of content posted depends if they are
male or female.
According to psychology, self-esteem is the self-evaluation of an individual, which can
be negative or positive. Humans maintain and raise it because it is a basic human need and
scholars have found results that are contradicting between self-esteem and the use of social
media. The rationale of this study is to investigate about the attitude that goes behind the use of
social media and its impact on the individuals depending on their self-esteem and gender. It is
seen that people with a high self-esteem tend to get more active on social media and utilize their
skills to make more friends (Nesi & Prinstein, 2015). They have a better networking skills than
people with a low self-esteem because a positive self-evaluation gives them more reasons to
express themselves. However, few studies have found no similarity between the use of social
media and self-esteem. Another aspect shows that the people who communicate more in real life

2SOCIAL MEDIA
get less time to be active on social media. Gender influences the content posted because the
females tend to post more pictures and videos than male as they are interested in comparing
different aspects of physical attractiveness. They also compare themselves through the dimension
of self-expression because for them it is personally relevant. These attributes affect the attitude
and the type of things being posted on social media because it influences their behavior and
manner (Herring & Kapidzic, 2015).
The hypotheses of this research is individuals with higher self-esteem will have a
significantly high positive attitude towards social media than individuals with a lower self-
esteem. This hypotheses forms the basis of research and it signifies that people with higher self-
esteem are more open and adapting towards social media than from people who have a low self-
esteem and tend to doubt themselves. It also shows that self-esteem is wrongly associated with
the time spend on social media (Vogel et al., 2014). This literature review suggests that self-
esteem does affect the use of social media.

3SOCIAL MEDIA
References
Duffett, R. G. (2017). Influence of social media marketing communications on young
consumers’ attitudes. Young Consumers.
Herring, S. C., & Kapidzic, S. (2015). Teens, gender, and self-presentation in social
media. International encyclopedia of social and behavioral sciences, 2, 1-16.
Nesi, J., & Prinstein, M. J. (2015). Using social media for social comparison and feedback-
seeking: Gender and popularity moderate associations with depressive
symptoms. Journal of abnormal child psychology, 43(8), 1427-1438.
Vogel, E. A., Rose, J. P., Roberts, L. R., & Eckles, K. (2014). Social comparison, social media,
and self-esteem. Psychology of Popular Media Culture, 3(4), 206.