Physical education vs Instragram: 

Educating young people to understand body

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My Personal Experience

From my experience of teaching physical education in an all girls secondary school it was clear to me that the students have a very different upbringing to the one that I had only a few years ago, and the main reason for this altered perception is social media. Hardly a day went by where I didn’t have a student ask me to grant them permission because they wanted to take a selfie because “Miss, the lighting is just so good in here.” Sometimes it was encouraging, as students wanted to record games they were playing in PE because they enjoyed them so much, however it is that feeling of “if its not on my insta miss it didn’t really happen” that shows just how deeply affected these students are by social media. In one particular case, I was teaching a HRA circuit to a class and a number of students asked me if they did workouts like this more often would they have a “great bod”. My only answer to them could be that a great body is one that you are healthy and happy in, nothing else. However, it was clear to me the students desired to have the toned, muscular bodies they see on social media sites.

According to the Experts

It cannot be denied that the students in school are of a generation most commonly known as “tehno babies” whereby they have grown up in the world of smart phones, ipads, laptops, selfies and social media. Bourdieu has defined the term habitus, as the means by which society is ‘written into’ the body, offers a way of understanding how social structures, norms and ideals can come to influence an individual’s corporeal practice at an unconscious level. (Hill et al., 2016) this reflects how society is playing a role on how these teenagers perceive the world. Throughout these societies, the mass media uniformly idealises an unrealistic image of female beauty that is predominantly thin, yet impossibly toned and curvaceous, accompanied by perfect skin, teeth and hair (Bell et al., 2011) it has been found that overall social media plays a negative role in the opinions of young people about their body image “Correlational studies consistently show that social media usage is associated with body image concerns among young women and men, and longitudinal studies suggest that this association may strengthen over time.” (Fardouly and Vartanian, 2016)

Future Practice

In my future practice I would love to tackle the issue of social media influence on young people. They are severely misinformed as a result of the large volume of content available to them on the internet and in particular the large volume of incorrect content in relation to health and fitness. I believe that information on how to maintain a healthy lifestyle as well as how to treat your body and how to train safely should be part of the HRA strand and I would be teaching the students about these topics in this strand. Given that so many students are attached to social media I would like to use platforms such as facebook, twitter or Instagram to engage them with the topic and to show them that not all uses of social media are bad but that they have to be careful what messages they take from it.

References
·         Hill, J., Sandford, R. and Enright, E., 2016. ‘It has really amazed me what my body can now do’: boundary work and the construction of a body-positive dance community. Sport in Society, 19(5), pp.667-679.)
·         Bell, Beth & Dittmar, Helga 2011. Does Media Type Matter? The Role of Identification in Adolescent Girls’ Media Consumption and the Impact of Different Thin-Ideal Media on Body Image. Sex Roles. [Online] 65 (7), 478–490.)
·         Fardouly, J. and Vartanian, L.R., 2016. Social media and body image concerns: Current research and future directions. Current opinion in psychology, 9, pp.1-5.

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