Social Media, Self-Worth, and How to Stop Comparing Yourself to Others Online
If you’ve ever opened Instagram and started feeling worse about your body, your career, relationship, finances, and possibly your entire existence, you’re not alone.
In the last couple of years, social media has become flooded with “what I eat in a day” videos, body transformations, anti-aging routines, weight loss medications, productivity hacks, and endless content telling us how to become “better versions” of ourselves. Subconsciously, this makes people feel like they need to always be doing MORE to finally be enough, and that’s a hard message to hear every day.
As therapists at Soultality Psychotherapy in Boston, MA, we’re seeing a noticeable increase in body image concerns, eating disorders, perfectionism, and other comparison-based anxieties. And the root cause of this is surprisingly being fueled by social media.
Today we want to talk about what’s driving this, the problems people are experiencing because of it, and the changes we help our patients implement to find relief.
So, Why Do We Compare Ourselves to Social Media?
The science behind this is actually quite fascinating! Human beings have been around for thousands of years. And during that time period, we’ve gotten pretty good at surviving. Part of that survival mechanism has been to notice patterns and comparisons.
Way back in the day, comparing ourselves to the people around us helped us understand where we fit in the community. It helped us learn the social norms, build relationships, and stay connected to the groups of people we depended on for survival.
Now that we live in the modern world with DoorDash, our basic survival skills that were focused on tiny groups of people are now being used on the internet with billions of people to compare ourselves to.
Our brains were never designed to wake up and immediately start comparing ourselves to the “I work 2 hours a week, live on a beach, and make 1 million dollars a month” type of people. Yet by scrolling social media, this is what our brains start doing. They see what others are doing and believe that we must elevate what we’re doing so we can keep up with the crowd.
Once we see that this comparison stems from basic survival skills, it makes it easier to stop and notice what’s really going on.
The Comparison Traps We See As Therapists
A powerful concept in therapy is to help people discover recognition. In this case, it’s helping people recognize specifically when they’ve fallen into a comparison trap. Because once somebody can SEE the trap they’re in, they have more freedom to decide whether it’s actually serving them.
Here are some of the biggest comparison traps we’re seeing right now as therapists:
Career Comparison
You go to school, start a career, move up in that career, and on paper you should feel good about it…until you see Brad online getting his third promotion of the year, buying a big house at 32 years old, and celebrating with yet another beach vacation.
Suddenly your already successful life starts feeling inadequate.
Many of our patients come into therapy feeling like they’re behind in life. What’s fascinating is that most of them aren’t behind at all. They’re often doing INCREDIBLY well! They’re just measuring their lives against an endless stream of highlight reels. But what social media rarely ever shows are the sacrifices, debt, stress, family support, or failures that happened behind the scenes.
The Rise of GLP1’s
For a while, our culture felt like it was moving towards a healthier relationship with bodies. There were conversations about body acceptance, neutrality, and the idea that our worth wasn’t determined by the number on a scale.
Those conversations DO still exist, but there’s been a shift with the rise of GLP-1 medications. Since the rise of GLP-1, social media has been flooded with transformation photos, weight loss content, and “what I eat in a day” videos.
To be very clear, there is zero judgment here about people who use these medications. What concerns us as therapists is when people start to wonder why their body doesn’t look like that, why their progress feels slower, and why they don’t have the same results. This comparison trap convinces people that their body is a problem to solve, which leads to over-exercising, under-eating, and feeling generally terrible about their own bodies.
‘Looksmaxxing’ in Men
For the first time ever, we’re seeing men create and follow aesthetic norms. For years, most conversations about body image largely focused on women.
But now, many young men are experiencing enormous pressure around their appearance. Social media is filled with images about muscle mass, masculinity, attractiveness, and “looksmaxxing.” We’re seeing young men use some pretty extreme methods to increase how they look by adding in lots of supplements, rigid diets, steroids, cosmetic surgery, and other unhealthy ways to match the standard they see online.
The trap here is that social media has men believing their worth is something they can earn through optimization. And when somebody lives by this belief, suddenly their happiness, relationships, confidence, and success are all living on the other side of looking better. This has significant detrimental psychological effects on young men, and it’s rising at an alarming rate.
Fear of Aging
One of the more surprising things we’ve seen recently is how many young people are worrying about aging.
We’re seeing teenagers and people in their 20s anxious about wrinkles they don’t even have yet. They’re researching anti-aging routines, obsessively monitoring their appearance, using Botox as a preventative, and feeling extreme pressure to preserve their youthful appearance.
The issue here isn’t the Botox use; it’s the fear. Social media has created an environment where aging is treated like a problem instead of being viewed as a normal part of being a human.
How Therapy Can Help with Social Media Comparisons
If you’re reading this and realizing that social media might be affecting you more than you thought, you don’t have to delete all of your apps and go off the grid. In fact, we rarely ever, as therapists, recommend going from one extreme to the other.
In therapy, we’ll start encouraging curiosity with our patients. For those who find themselves comparing themselves to others on social media, we’ll ask them to pay attention to how they feel after scrolling.
Do they feel good? Entertained? Inadequate?
Are there accounts that they enjoy following, or ones that invite comparison?
Are there times of day that make this feeling stronger than others?
Once our patients start getting an idea of what specifically triggers them, we’ll start building in newer habits that feel more aligned with their values. This can look like limiting the times of the day that they scroll, unfollowing certain accounts, placing screen time limits, or even adding in filters to their social media so they see less of what triggers their feelings and more of what fills their cup.
Another tool we implement with our patients is to notice in the moment if scrolling social media serves them well. And in that moment that it makes them feel inadequate, they can redirect to something that does make them feel good. Maybe that’s going on a walk, reading a book, calling a friend, going to a coffee shop. The possibilities are endless.
You Were Never Meant to Spend Your One Beautiful Life Comparing Yourself to Strangers
At the end of the day, social media is a way to connect with others, provide entertainment, and learn more about the world. It only becomes a problem when it becomes a gauge for success.
Your worth cannot be determined by someone else’s vacation, follower count, body size, or financial status. Your life and your body are not projects that need endless improvement, and your life isn’t ‘behind’ just because someone else appears to be ahead.
At Soultality Psychotherapy in Boston, MA, we help individuals navigate anxiety, OCD, perfectionism, self-esteem challenges, eating disorders, and body image concerns using evidence-based approaches rooted in compassion and real-life practicality.
If you find yourself stuck in this comparison cycle and want to build a life that feels meaningful to you, we’d be honored to support you. Take a free 15-minute consultation by scheduling an appointment here.