Brown, Trisha2015-12-082015-12-082015http://hdl.handle.net/11558/138In society today, social media plays a huge role in everyday life. It is literally available at the palm of the hand any time throughout the day. Because of this easily accessible media, it causes effects on teenage girls at the touch of a button. Most of the time, these effects are negative; such effects can include low self-esteem due to teenage girls wanting to look a particular way, eating disorders to try to achieve the ideal body, and the never ending cycle of caring too much or too little about their appearance. All of these have the possibility of sticking with the teenage girls throughout their whole life. These effects are caused by the “ideal” body that their friends on social media portray. This in turn portrays the message that teenage girls need to look a certain way to fit into society’s mold. In this paper, I explore what the “ideal” body really is and why and how teenage girls are affected by it. Although teenage girls think they need to look like the ideal woman that is being portrayed by their friends on social media to belong in society, if we can simply support and show respect to each other the negative stigmas from the life long search of the ideal body will diminish.en-USTeenage girlsSocial media