[personal profile] quippe
The Blurb On The Back:

Do you ever obsess about your body? Do you lie awake at night, fretting about the state of your career? Does everyone else’s life seem better than yours? Does it feel as if you’ll never be good enough?


Why Social Media Is Ruining Your Life tackles head on the pressure cooker of comparison and unreachable levels of perfection that social media has created in our modern world.

In this book, Katherine Ormerod meets the experts involved in curating, building and combating the most addictive digital force humankind has ever created. From global influencers - who collectively have over 10 million followers - to clinical psychologists, plastic surgeons and professors, Katherine uncovers how our relationship with social media has rewired our behavioural patterns, destroyed our confidence and shattered our attention spas.

Why Social Media Is Ruining Your Life is a rallying cry that will provide you with the knowledge, tactics and weaponry you need to find a more healthy way to consume social media and reclaim your happiness.




Katherine Ormerod is a fashion journalist, social media influencer and a fashion beauty and lifestyle brand consultancy. Published in 2018 this readable book aimed at young women is ripe for an update, mixing academic research and anecdotes from influencers to explain why social media is so bad for your well being but it downplays the role of the mass media in feeding into trends and is quiet on solutions to abuse within the fashion industry.

First published in 2018, this book generated a lot of media attention at the time of its release, partly because revelations were coming out about Facebook’s attempts to manipulate user experience to influence emotions and opinions and partly because of the way that Ormerod combined academic research with anecdotes from social media influencers, not least her own. Given everything that has happened over the last 7 years since publication, I think it’s one of those books that is probably ripe for an update given not just what else has come out about what technology companies have done but also the interim changes in the techscape, notably the takeover of X.

Aimed mainly at young women in their 20s and 30s, Ormerod focuses on the influence of social media on each of the following areas:
- identity;
- body image;
- health;
- relationships;
- motherhood;
- career & money; and
- politics.

Each chapter focuses on how social media affects interpretation of each of these areas and deep dives into the adverse effects. Ormerod has interviewed social media influencers who have shared their own experiences with those areas (mostly highlighting the ways in which they feel conflicted about how they deal with the specific topics). I have to confess that I did not recognise the names of any of the social media influencers named but then I am not in the target demographic for the book and not active in these social media fields. I would, however, have liked to see some sense of Ormerod challenging the influencers on their experiences, given that for all the issues they experience they nonetheless continue to make money from it.

Similarly, although I appreciated Ormerod sharing her own experiences of being an influencer and the effects on her, there is no sense here of her questioning her own need to use it or whether she’s part of the problem (in fact, while acknowledging how she curates her own image, she also makes clear that she will not changing how she uses it and has not really contemplated what the effect of her feed is on her followers). This was something that particularly irked me in the chapter on career and money where she talks about how people have to intern for free to get a foothold in the fashion industry and then have to deal with low wages and long hours while potentially getting five star travel, luxury bags or clothes and access to celebrities. I appreciated Ormerod discussing her own experience (which sound awful and exploitative), but the obvious solution here - to require paid for internships and payment of a living wage - is something that she avoids. Worse, when she talks about how she curated her own feed during a luxury trip with friends, she at no point considers whether she is reinforcing perceptions about the industry or what it offers. The whiff of hypocrisy is noticeable.

Also irksome is that in the chapter on body image Ormerod - rightly, in my opinion - discusses how social media has warped perceptions of body image by making it instantly accessible. However, while she acknowledges how the fashion industry also has things to answer for in terms of warping body image expectations, she plays down how the industry continues to dominate notions of beauty. This is especially noticeable given that Ormerod points out how - at the time of publication - there was a move to embrace different body types and beauty standards but this is precisely what has been undermined in the last 18 months, with plus-sized models in particular saying that the fashion industry is making a deliberate decision to reduce opportunities for them. That is not a social media phenomenon - it is an industry problem that then flows into social media, which in turn reinforces the industry.

This is not to say that the book is bad. Ormerod’s background in fashion writing comes through as she writes clearly and fluidly, expertly weaving in academic studies and discussions about algorithms to support her points. I particularly liked the takeaways section she has at the end of each chapter, which distills the main arguments and sets out some practical steps that the reader can take to improve their own experience and she is right to emphasise that you, as the user of social media, are the product because tech companies are using your data and selling it to third parties. I also liked the fact that Ormerod also sets out where social media has been beneficial to people, e.g. allowing people to connect more widely with those who suffer similar conditions or who want to understand specific issues. I also think that the book is good at making the reader think about their own relationship with social media, although she seems to operate from an assumption that you can’t step away from social media completely.

I do think that the book is worth your time, especially if you are a young woman as there will be things here about relationships, pregnancy and careers that will resonate with you and are worth reading. However I do think it underplays wider societal and industry - particularly the fashion industry - issues that feed into a lot of what the book discusses and I also think that it is a product of its time and tech and the social media world has moved on, making this a ripe topic for reassessment.

The Verdict:

Katherine Ormerod is a fashion journalist, social media influencer and a fashion beauty and lifestyle brand consultancy. Published in 2018 this readable book aimed at young women is ripe for an update, mixing academic research and anecdotes from influencers to explain why social media is so bad for your well being but it downplays the role of the mass media in feeding into trends and is quiet on solutions to abuse within the fashion industry.

Thanks to the Amazon Vine Programme for the review copy of this book.

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