Likes in Lieu of Happiness:

Dana Giles woke up one Saturday desperate for Instagram likes.

The 21-year-old reflexively reached for her silver iPhone X, which was placed on her bedside table. Immediately, Giles began scrolling through the vicious, endless stream of obviously edited and posed photos of her friends on Instagram.

Giles' anxiety worsened as she scrolled deeper and deeper into highlight reels of girls traveling, wearing bikinis and living their best lives. Giles began to compare herself and her lifestyle to her friends. Waves of anxiety began to fester in her mind. Conscious that she had not posted anything herself in over two weeks, Giles began to crave the attention and instant gratification that comes with likes and comments on Instagram. "If my Instagram feed looked good, then I was feeling good," said Giles.

Determined to look her best, Giles, a senior at Southern Methodist University, set out to bronze her fair skin with a $40 spray tan and curl her blonde hair with a $45 blowout. Nearly $100 later, Giles finally felt ready to take a photo for her 3,852 Instagram followers to see. She slipped a white off-the-shoulder top onto her newly bronzed skin and found a friend to follow her around Dallas, in search of a worthy Instagram backdrop.

It took two hours for Giles to find a simple light pink wall downtown. "Probably 300 photos were taken," she said.

"It was ridiculous," said Giles, laughing as she looked back at her own behavior.

As someone who struggles with anxiety, Giles always felt frustrated that mental health issues were taboo to discuss. She never realized how many people around her were taking medication for anxiety "because everyone on social media looked like they were living these perfect lives," Giles said.

Putting the best version of yourself out there may be making yourself feel good but it does not make others feel good. Giles attributes her mental health issues to social media. Last year, it got particularly bad when she began to value herself on how many likes and comments she got on Instagram. She felt like she was always trying to keep up with all of the people she followed. "It was a lot of trying to show off how cool I was. It was so disingenuous and exhausting. It was like keeping up with the Joneses all the time," Giles said. While comparing herself to all of the unattainable, and even maybe unhealthy, standards of beauty that are presented on Instagram, Giles said her anxiety worsened.

Giles decided to confront social media's negative attributes by creating her own website and Instagram account, I Want the Real, for fellow college students to openly share their stories and experiences regarding mental health struggles and other taboo topics. Giles interviews students, some of whom choose to be anonymous, who are willing to share stories about complicated and emotional issues, including coming out to your friends, addictions and abusive relationships.

In a recent I Want the Real post, Giles discusses the toxic and competitive nature of Instagram.

As the conversation around the toll social media can take on mental health becomes more open, one can hope that the pressures from social media will lessen. But there is still a long way to go. As Giles said, "I'm not trying to boycott social media, but I just want to bring awareness to our society."

These feelings are shared across the spectrum. An informal online survey of 112 college students from across the country found more than two-thirds of them compare their bodies to others while on social media.

The bikini pictures of models and influencers fill Instagram's news feeds, offering anyone who is scrolling unrealistic standards of beauty. Meanwhile, men who see these photos could become accustomed to the Barbie-like figures, causing them to subconsciously perceive them as the norm. According to the Center for Change, 96% of women and girls do not have bodies that match up to those presented in the media. This is ultimately causing an increased rate of body image issues and disordered eating.

A survey from the University of Pittsburgh also showed the direct correlation between social media and negative body image feedback. People who spent more time on social media had a 2.2 times the risk of eating and body image concerns as those who did not use social media. And those who spend the most time on social media have 2.6 times the risk of developing mental health issues.

Of the 112 people who responded to the survey, 91 college students said they compare their lifestyle to others while on social media. "It's really hard to watch 30 peoples' stories of a party I wasn't invited to," one respondent to the college students survey said bluntly.

Anyone who takes a detailed look at this topic would likely find it's everywhere. Young people especially seem to be addicted to social media. According to PEW Research Center, the vast majority of teenagers have smartphones and almost half of teenagers are online constantly. "We're not present. We're not enjoying life. We're just enjoying what's on the screen," said Giles.

More than 8 in 10 said in the survey that social media has made them feel self-conscious. In addition, nearly all of the students surveyed said they feel jealous while using social media and 38% said social media has made them feel depressed."

Teen Line, a teen help hotline run out of Cedar Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, allows adolescents, many of whom are suicidal or anxious, to vent about their issues and feelings. After volunteering for the service, Hannah Fogelman saw the "frighteningly blatant connection between social media and low self-worth, depression, and anxiety."

Since social media apps now allow people to edit, filter and distort their photos, Fogelman thinks they "bolster a false sense of attainable perfection and contribute to a culture of constant comparison."

A 2019 study in Britain found that of the 11,000 adolescents, those who were heavy users of social media had a two to three times the likelihood of being depressed than those who do not use social media.

"What's worse, each person I spoke to felt as if they were the only ones suffering," Fogelman said.

Claire Fama, a senior at University of Southern California, is very in tune with both the effects of social media on anxiety and eating disorders, and the importance social media plays in the life of a college student.

Fama, who recently deleted all social media because she felt addicted, said she knows girls in her sorority who screenshot models' or influencers' Instagram posts of bikini pictures and set them to their phone backgrounds to diet. "When they're in line for food, they look down at their phone and it's a reminder to serve themselves less food," she said.

As a lifestyle PR major, Fama said the hardest part of giving up social media was trying to keep up with the influencers she needed to follow for her industry. In fact, when she had a job interview, she had to redownload Instagram for a day so she could prepare.

As Fama is aware, social media is so essential and ingrained in the inner workings of society that it is impossible to suggest deleting it entirely. It is more practical to suggest bringing awareness to the potential harms of social media and finding better ways to deal with these issues when they arise.

Instagram is aware of its negative transformation and is currently working to alter the mission of its platform. Recently, Instagram tested a new layout on several Canadian accounts, in an attempt to refocus the platform on self-expression rather than popularity.

In 2019, the platform also expanded its website to incorporate a Help Center with information about eating disorders, social media abuse and safety and tips for parents.

Aside from the pressure to look a certain way on social media, Victoria Garrick, a student athlete at the University of Southern California, believes there is also a pressure to achieve. She says, "On social media there is this constant notion that everyone is achieving. Everyone is doing great things. Everyone has a great life," she said. "We are comparing ourselves to the highlight reels of others."

Garrick, the starting libero for USC's Division I volleyball team, believes social media is one of the main contributors to her anxiety, depression and eating disorder. As an athlete, Garrick has always struggled with her muscular body type. But it has gotten progressively worse as social media has turned into a stream of doctored photos of the skinniest bodies from the most perfect angles.

Suffering from her worst depression during sophomore year, Garrick remembers feeling self-conscious as she compared herself to all those who were constantly achieving on her Instagram feed. "I didn't feel good enough," she said.

Garrick recognizes that the pressure is relatively new. Before social media, if someone wasn't invited to a party, he or she might never know it. Now, there are endless photos on several different platforms livestreaming the entire party, making people watching from the outside feel excluded.

It may only be getting worse for the generations to follow. "I already had my own body-image issues growing up and I didn't have Instagram to scroll every morning and every evening. I can't imagine being these young girls who are waking up to these perfect plastic surgery faces and then going to bed seeing the same perfect bodies," Garrick adds.

Garrick's turning point came in an unexpected way. When she was approached by GOOD Magazine to write an article for National Girls and Women in Sports Day, she took it as an opportunity to explain her journey of accepting her body as a female athlete. "Girls who compete to win the national championship will not, and physically cannot, look the same as models clouding our Instagram feeds," she wrote.

Garrick's article got more than 80,000 shares, which made her realize there were so many other people in similar circumstances who suffered the same disappointment, fears and anxiety that she felt on a daily basis after checking social media.

Garrick now speaks at Ted Talks, conventions and schools around the country to spark open conversations about her mental health struggles and accepts her muscular body for what it is. She boasts more than 35,000 followers, while most college students are thrilled to reach 2,500 followers. On her account, she uses the hashtag #realposts to remind her followers that most of the photos in their feeds are edited, posed or only portray someone's best life.

As more people become cognizant of the unrealistic world portrayed on social media, hopefully #realposts will be more of the norm rather than the exception. As Garrick says bluntly in her #realpost: "That face you make when your cellulite is showing but you don't give a damn."