Social Media Isn't Ruining Your Confidence…You Are | The Impact of Social Media on Tall Girls

Good morning everybody. You are currently listening to a Tall Girls podcast hosted by a tall girl named India. I hope everyone who's tuning in today's doing super fantastic. Before I get into this episode, I do want to say, make sure you're following me on my socials at a Tall Girls podcast, on Instagram, TikTok, and Pinterest, so that you can stay up to date on all of the latest podcast episodes and catch a glimpse of my everyday life. Also, feel free to leave me your review and let me know how tall you are. I'm genuinely curious. Everything is going to be linked in the description. Fun fact, I'm also starting a monthly newsletter. The link for that is going to be in the description, so you guys can sign up. What's gonna be in the monthly newsletter You and I will both find out at the same time, But I intend to get more personal in there with you. Guys. Have like this little one stop shop where there's resources and links to different tall clothing brands and the breads that I interview and stuff like that that are going to be in that newsletter. So everything is just there laid out for you, and it's like for the entire month, So it's not like you're going week by week or every two weeks for each issue. It's just that everything for the entire month is just in that one newsletter. So it's simple and straightforward. So I don't know, I think that it will be cool. It's just like an experiment, you know, no strings attached, nothing has to be like super super perfect or anything. We're just going to try it out and see how that works. So the link to sign up for a toll Growth newsletter is going to be in the description. How do you recommend that you sign up? Just to you know, get the vibes. And by the time this episode is up, I will be in London. Well, if I scheduled this properly, this will be the day that I'm actually flying back from London. I don't know, it's just too much math. I just know how many extra episodes that I need to do so that I'm good for when I'm on my chrip. But yes, I will be going to London. This is kind of like the graduation trip for myself. Well not for myself. I'm going with my mom, but this is my graduation trip, my gift for graduating and getting through four years of undergrad Okay, so I'll be going there for nine days, and you know, this is the nine days is a pretty long time. And yes, I know that I studied abroad for a whole entire month. I lived in Italy for a whole entire month, but I don't even think I count that as a vacation. It was a semi vacation because I was able to do other things, but I was still going to school. This is my longest like vacation vacation no work, no school that I've had ever in my twenty two years of existence. So that should be fun. And yes, I am going to be working ahead. I'm working ahead for work and I'm working ahead for this podcast because I just want to keep everything running smoothly and up today. And you know, I've had like a good three weeks after graduation just to kind of chill and get it together. I'm not doing anything extra extra just yet, because you know, I wanted to use this time to rest, but I don't even know if I actually this this time to fully rest because during the three weeks I've just been working ahead in preparation for the trip. So it is what it is. But I hope my trip went really well. I hope I had a grand ole time. I planned out every single day. Yes, I'm that type of person, like I have a whole lot tenerary of what we're gonna do every single day. Okay, not like minute by minute, hour by hour, but I know exactly where we're going that day, and I have an idea of where we're going to eat that day too, and how we're gonna weave that into the whole schedule. I think I've said this before that I'm kind of a planner. I like planning things out so just so that I don't have to think too much or stress too much of what's gonna happen or what we're gonna do, Like everything's already planned out for me. So I hope that the plan went well. I hope everything went according to schedule, according to the plan, and I had a good time. But check out my socials and maybe you'll see because I'm definitely posting pictures and videos and stories and stuff like that about that. So make sure you follow me on my socials so you can see how London went, and maybe you can learn a thing or two if you're going to take a trip to London as well, and speaking of social media, that happens to be the topic of today's episode. That was a perfect little segue. But today I'm going to be talking about social media and confidence. It's just interesting to see how the evolution of social media played out, I guess you could say, especially up to this point, because you know, well, I can really only speak from my experience with it because I was I was at age group where YouTube and Instagram was super super popular when I was younger. So just seeing the height of that and seeing the shift to TikTok and the popularity of TikTok, which used to be musically, I remember I was all up on musically. That was an embarrassing time. I hope I deleted all of my videos that's somewhere in my phone of me with musically. But anyways, seeing the shift to TikTok and that becoming popular to now TikTok potentially being banned band well in America in USA. But it's just interesting to see that and then Facebook or Meta if you want to call it that, coming out with threads to I guess be the Instagram version of Twitter. Like it's a little bit confusing. It's just interesting to just hear about how everything with it changed. But I think that there's just one common topic relating to it, and that's how it affects, like the self esteem and the self confidence of the people using the apps. And I've spoken about this before, like a long long time ago, a year or two ago, I think, because oh, I've had this podcast for three years, that's crazy. But yeah, I've spoken about this like probably a year or two ago, about how social media ruins confidence. The thing is, social media itself isn't ruining your confidence. You are. How you personally use the specific platforms ultimately affects your self esteem. Let's talk about it. Social media is such a beautiful place for tall women. You can connect with the tall girl community, participate in body positivity and body neutrality movements, and find positive representations of tall women in the media. But it's also easy to get sucked into comparison culture, unrealistic beauty standards, negative comments, and pressures to look a certain way. There's really two main sides to social media, the good and the bad side, and it's important to be careful, especially with the haters. In fact, I don't know one tall girl on any social media platform who hasn't received at least one creepy or hurtful comment or message from a faceless account. I know I've had my fair share of those, and I don't want to get into how weird they were. Okay, not everything regarding social media is your fault, all right. You can't control the messages, you can't control people's actions, you can't even control that algorithm for the most part. But you have the capability to control what you see on social media and control who you interact with. Ask yourself, are you following people who look like you? What type of posts and videos are you interacting with? Are you responding to those negative comments and messages? Frequently? Simple actions like that can impact your relationship with social media and can affect what you see on those platforms, because ultimately, the main goal of social media is to keep you on that platform. So while they'll feed you just random stuff half the time, especially stuff that you don't really need to or want to see, they're gonna start taking notes. All the algorithms, or the people behind the algorithms, I don't know, algorithm will start taking note of what you like, what you prefer, and what you don't like and what you don't prefer, and we'll start catering towards that. They'll start feeding your content on your homepage that relates to what you want to see, and they'll even start filtering out messages that you don't want to see either. That's also a really good thing about Instagram. They started like filtering out, like depending on what words or whatever that seem hurtful or words that you don't like. I think you could set that up potentially, or is that Facebook? Remember? But they start filtering out messages that may be inappropriate and may be hurtful so that you don't see them. But if you're constantly engaging with accounts that are making you feel bad about yourself, how do you expect yourself to feel confident or feel good about using social media? Before I continue, I would like to give a shout out to Karai for sponsoring today's episode. To my long torso girlies out there, your cries and complaints have been heard because this brand is a solution you've been longing for. Karai is your go to destination for stunning bodysuits designed specifically for women with long torsos. So say goodbye to awkward fits and constant readjustments and hello to flawless style, comfort and the perfect fit. Make sure you check them out Atwirecarie dot com and at wear Karai on Instagram. They'll be linked to my description and let's go hashtag long Torso gang and you know. In providing tips for you guys, I really really wanted to say to follow people who look like you. But there are two sides to tall women on social media. The side with tall women who share confidence and fashion tips and resources to the tall girl community, and the side with tall women who use their height to sexualize themselves, leading other people to sexualized tall women. Take your pick on which side you want to be on. My tips to tall girls who are using social media is to follow accounts and creators who celebrate being tall in a good way. Block and unfollow Accounts that make you feel insecure include a user five seven, three, two four one nine who offer to pay you for your feed picks and utilize social media tools to customize your experience. So like for Instagram, you have the close Friends feature for stories where the people that you choose to see your stories will see those stories if you choose to post it on the close Friend stories, if that makes sense, but you can control who sees your stories, making you feel more comfortable about posting on stories. Some platforms also have the option to report content that isn't healthy for other people to see you're healthy for you to see. Or for instance, like with TikTok, if you're watching a certain type of video, they may ask you, oh, do you want to see more videos like this? You could put yes or no, or there's like these other features or options on other platforms where you can choose to show me more like this so you can see more videos like that. I also really like the idea of limiting your time on social media, especially as a person who works in marketing. Social media is a big part of my job, and I find that using it both for work and for personal or even this podcast, which I also kind of consider personal, is very overwhelming and very overstimulating. Just constantly scrolling through for ideas both for work and for my podcast, it could just be too much, so setting like a cutoff time. I usually have my cutoff time to seven pm to where I just don't really scroll through social media as much and I kind of force myself to watch long form videos. So I mean, yes, YouTube and social media, but I find it better to watch like fifteen twenty thirty even an hour long videos on YouTube to kind of just like bring my brain back to reality after watching so many short form videos and content. Even watching a TV show, like I try to say, Okay, this is the TV show I'm gonna be watching for a while. The episodes are usually forty five minutes to an hour long, so I tend to watch those as well to kind of like bring myself back to reality, you know, make my intention span longer, if that makes sense. Limiting time on social media can definitely be helpful, and you know, like sitting in some grass, touching some grass, that's what we like to say, touching some grass to kind of just ground yourself and remind yourself that, yeah, I am a human being who doesn't really need to stare at a screen all day. And I also really like meeting my notifications, Like all of my notifications for social media are currently off, and see that's even my emails. Even for my emails, I don't if I call and see that's a good thing for my mental health because I'm not overstimulated. I'm not getting super anxious by all the notifications that I have building up. But the issue is I take so long to respond to anybody. See that's part of the reason why I kind of take a while to respond to you guys, Like I respond anywhere from twenty four hours within twenty four hours to like days and weeks because I have my notifications off so I don't see them right away. And then when I go on the app and I see, oh, you have like ten messages, I'm like, ooh, I kind of don't want to open them because that's a lot. So I've just had a designated time to open them, which is a really in that moment, it's just really weird. But you know what, mute your notifications if it works for you, Okay, if it's for work, I genuinely don't recommend it. I do it because every like ten minutes or so, I'm constantly checking my emails to see if i got like any emails. So that's how I'm able to stay up to date with that, or or I just use slack on asana. I don't know why I'm going off on a tangent with this, but your notifications for social media, that's what works for you, because I know that's very helpful in making the whole situation just less overstimulating. And it's just weird that a lot of creators are like, yeah, turn my post notifications on so you know when I post, and then like you do that for like five ten creators. That's too much, girl, turn off them notifications. Okay, I know you want to see their content, but your mental health is more important. But yeah, social media also can sometimes have a way of making you feel as though your height is just just makes you out of place, makes you feel out of place in a way, especially when you're looking at a lot of these creators or even models, whether it's Instagram models or like actual models like that do that for work. Many of them are on the shorter side, and it's also kind of it also feels as though they are more prevalent on those social media platforms when that's not even necessarily the case. So if you are someone if you're a tall woman who is struggling with feeling confident about your height with social media, I do want to say that being tall is amazing. It can give you this power, this presence, this unique perspective on the world. But social media can be a complicated place for us. Okay, many people on there, including models, don't necessarily have that towering stature that we have, but that doesn't mean that we're not celebrated. Newsflash for the tall girlies, there are people who are literally editing and photoshopping themselves to make themselves appear taller, Like they literally want to have your height. So do au so alo favor and stand with your backstraight and your head held high. Thank you, But I do want to ask you, guys, do you have any other advice on how tall women can use social media to feel more confident about themselves? Like, how can we use social media positively and to celebrate our heights? Feel free to share anyways. I'm going to end the episode here. Thank you so so much for tuning in. I really appreciate it, and I appreciate you as always. Feel free to hit me up bout my socials and a Tall Girls podcast, and you can let me know what you thought of about this episode. You can let me know what you think about social media. What's your stance on social media? Do you use it often? Do you try to limit it? How do you try to limit it? Let me know. I do want to have a conversation about this, because I am very interested. I'm still trying, even as a marketer, I'm still trying to learn how to make social media work better for me in terms of my mental health and not getting overwhelmed and overstimulated about it. So I'm down to have a conversation. Everything is going to be linked in the description. Don't forget to sign up for my newsletter too. That's also going to be in the description. And I hope to see you at a Tall Girls newsletter. Yeah, So have a great rest of your day, week, month, year, life, whatever it is for you, and I'll catch you in the next one. Good night and goodbye.