As I get closer to a time when I’ll be ready to have children, I spend a lot of time thinking about what it will be like to raise kids in this age of technology. Luke and I discuss it all the time, and already we try to think of ways that we can keep our future kids healthy and happy, and drive positive self-worth despite the potential negative impacts of social media.
No matter what your age, there are always going to be things that life throws at you, curve balls that throw you off of your planned course. As adults, we still struggle with these sorts of things; having a mental crisis because your career isn’t where you wanted it to be, or feeling like you’re being left behind because your friends are all getting married and you aren’t. For my generation, social media didn’t pop up until we were in our early 20s, so in a way we escaped its wrath during our most vulnerable years. But these days, with all of these extra people to compare your life to, how do we prepare kids (or ourselves, for that matter) to handle all of this added pressure?
I have a theory.
Before I met Luke, I only had one other kind-of/not-really boyfriend. The ‘relationship’ lasted 5 weeks, and when it ended, I was jealous that he had university football to throw himself into, while I had… homework. Homework can be so boring that your mind wanders off of it, and mind-wandering when you’re going through a sort-of/not-really break-up is not what you want. So, my jealousy of his mind-occupying sport ended up in me joining a masters swim club on campus, where I’d swim laps for 1.5 hours 2-4x per week. If he had his outlet, I would have mine, and we could go on our merry ways separately.
What I discovered through this was that, even when your self-worth takes a hit in one function of your life, if you’re kicking goals and accomplishing things in another, it’s a lot harder to hate on yourself. Although I had been feeling pretty down and rejected, for the first time in my life I was exercising regularly and getting fitter without even really trying (I was more focused on technique and improving rather than exercising). My self-worth seemed to be at an all-time high.
It was sort of by accident, but in my final year of university I became so good at swimming that I made good on my ‘one-day’ aspiration to complete a team triathlon of sorts that my university holds every year – but I did it solo. For a girl who had always struggled with body image, yet still couldn’t motivate herself to get to the gym to make any lasting changes, that was such a mental accomplishment that made me realise that I’m so much more than what someone else thinks of me. In fact, I’m more than what I thought of me, because I never really thought I could actually run/bike/swim that entire event on my own.
Looking back at my high school years, I had similar struggles to what a lot of girls today do. I was unhappy with my weight, and I felt self-conscious when I talked to boys. Two of my best friends were modeling at the time, and would share their size 4 clothes with each other. Me and my size 12s were stuck with just each other. And while what bothered me to a degree, I never let it get the best of me. I didn’t place all of my self-worth in my pants size, and I really believe that’s because my parents always forced my sister and me to have a lot of hobbies and engage in sport. It gave us something to work hard and get better at, and we felt good about the gradual improvements we saw in ourselves and our capabilities. We felt a sense of pride and accomplishment in ourselves.
Our activities weren’t always competitive sports. We did anything from dance classes, I competed in a spelling bee (for real), my sister was an elite softball player, and we went skiing or snowboarding every weekend in the winter. One day I decided I’d had enough of dance classes: “I hate dance! I want to quit!” I told my Mom. “That’s fine,” I remember her saying, “but you’ll find something else to do instead. You will not sit around and do nothing”. I, randomly, picked horseback riding next.
Getting involved in extra-curriculars was a non-negotiable for us, and I strongly credit that with my healthy self-worth through high school and university. Even if members of the opposite sex weren’t interested in me, I was interested in me. I was proud of the things I was doing, I was getting better at them, and most of all, I was unplugged from the gossip and the unimportant fluff that teenagers can get so caught up in when left to their own devices.
About 6 months ago, I watched a documentary on television about teens and social media. The interviewer was speaking to a girl in grade 7 about what she thought she needed to be ‘cool’ and to be accepted. Her response was that she needed things, like eos lip balm, Beatz by Dre headphones, a Tiffany charm bracelet, and Dior sunglasses. This girl was 13 years old, and her life revolved around these material things that other kids and influencers, who all seemed to have ‘perfect’ lives, had and showed off on social media.
Kids’ self-worth (and frankly, many adults’ too) is so tied up in Instagram, showing off what they own, and secretly envying the things that others have and they don’t. It can be difficult for you to shut out that comparison mentality, so how are you supposed to teach a child or a teenager to do that? They’re still trying to find their place in the world, trying to understand their new emotions and changing bodies and increasing responsibilities. If adults struggle with it, how can we help kids?
I’ve thought long and hard about it, and my only promising solution is the one my parents employed even before Facebook was a thing. Get your kid involved, get them out and away from the nonsense, and exhaust them physically and mentally. Teach them what accomplishment looks like, so that even when they feel like they’re failing in one facet of their life, they can draw upon the successes they’ve had in another. If they’re not getting straight A’s in school, maybe they won at their swim meet on the weekend, or they finally landed that rail in the snowboard park. Now, as an adult, when I feel like I’m struggling at work or that I don’t like my job, I’m still flying high from achieving a 10km PB on the weekend.
If you’re not athletic, it doesn’t mean that this won’t work for you. You don’t need to play sports to achieve a feeling of accomplishment, you just have to try and get better. Try learning a coding language in your spare time and build a simple program. Learn guitar off of YouTube, or get out and walk 3x a week like your doctor recommended. Find something that you care about, set a goal, and accomplish it. Even if it’s only small, soon you’ll start to realise all of the amazing things you are capable of, even if your boyfriend broke up with you, even if your employer decided to end your work agreement. Those small accomplishments will teach you, or your children, that we really can do more than we think, and soon you too might run a triathlon solo, or whatever else it is you’ve always wanted to do.
The more we focus our self-worth in what we can do and what we are capable of, rather than what we have and show off, the better our mental health will be. Feeling inadequate is easy if we have one thing and one thing only that we feel defines us; our job, our relationship, our reputation. But when we diversify the things that we feel define us, maybe by becoming a runner, a hobby software coder, a chess champion, and a parent, we can begin to see that worth is subjective at best, and relative only to certain situations. Our self-worth cannot be summed up by only one part, material or otherwise, but it’s all of these parts that make life enjoyable and exciting and make it our own. Social media can’t express that, nor can it take it away.
Image Credit: Barefoot Blonde, Miss Bish, The Ivory Lane
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