Social media puts young women under pressure

 The desire to keep up with what is trendy in order to  tickle and please  friends and followers on social media is putting more young people, especially ladies, under a lot of  pressure.

With more young people signing on to social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and Twitter, there is a constant urge  to flaunt top-tier designer stuff and post pictures from  trips abroad and hang-outs at plush restaurants and hotels.

These platforms are gradually creating a culture of comparisons, purchases and lifestyles quite difficult and expensive to maintain.

“ The struggle is real. Sometimes it is even difficult to repeat clothes simply because you may have loaded a picture on Facebook or Instagram not long ago in that same attire”, Genevieve Nortey, a Level 200 student at the University of Ghana, told The Mirror.

She said with social media, the competition was keen as you were not only limited to friends or people around you but exposed to people all over the world, explaining that  in order to get a certain number of “followers” or “likes” a user must step up his or her game.

“Apart from the celebrities who have large followings because of what they do, ordinary users must constantly load exciting pictures to also attract  large followings. So you see pictures and videos of expensive lunch dates, young girls driving their own cars and road trips with friends, ” she added.

For some, she explained, the platforms are where they express  affection for their lovers and show off the expensive gifts they receive from them.

 Sex appeal

For want of followers, some female users post sexually suggestive pictures with some going further to send private messages to male suitors to contact them.

A male user who showed this reporter a  private chat between him and a follower on Instagram, said the lady used to send him explicit pictures and kept suggesting that they meet.

He said he believed most of these girls engaged in sex trade to keep up with their luxurious lifestyles, adding that he had friends who had hooked up with some of those girls.

 How Instagram works

Instagram is a free photo sharing application that allows users to take photos, apply a filter and share on the service or a variety of other social networking services including Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare,Tumblr, Flickr, and Posterous. The application is compatible with iOS or Android devices.

This means in order to stay connected to this platform, a user must have a device that can connect to the application as well as internet connectivity to share his or her exciting moments.

 Smoke and mirrors

Similar to most of these platforms, the  application has settings which allows users to show their exact location and also give options for filtering images to suit the user.

Some users are able to manipulate the location to a preferred location just to show off. So for instance, a person who lives at Adenta can alter his location to East Legon or Trassaco Valley just for bragging purposes.

Similarly, pictures can be filtered to look nicer or more beautiful than  they actually are in the real sense. Others also photoshop pictures from friends and pass them off as their own.

Recently, a popular Ghanaian newscaster, Nana Aba Anamoah of TV3,  trended on social media for “picture theft” after she  posted on her Twitter handle, a selfie and other pictures purporting to be from Old Trafford in the United Kingdom.

 The owner of the pictures, Yanfo Hackman,  who uses the handle “@yhackman” was alerted by his friend that the TV3 newscaster was using his pictures and claiming ownership of them.

Nana Aba was later reported to have said she only pulled a prank on her twitter followers which unfortunately generated into her employers taking punitive measures against her.