Principal’s Post on Empowering Young Women
Since 1935, Our Lady of Mercy Catholic College has held a legacy of instilling the values of leadership, excellence and service, nurturing confident young women. We empower our girls to make their make on society with confidence and compassion.
Following on from my last Principal Post in week 6, I’d like to share some reflections from adolescents themselves about how technology is shaping their daily lives, relationships, and learning. These insights are drawn from an article published in The Australian on August 15th, 2025, titled “Young Australians need nuanced solutions to social media harms.”
| The following article in The Australian highlights how social media platforms like Instagram and TikTok are linked to a rise in anxiety and poor mental health among teenagers, particularly girls. The article cites internal research showing that these apps are aware they make body image issues worse, yet use algorithms to feed users more negative content for profit. According to interviews with teenagers, social media creates a “pressure cooker” of impossible standards and a constant need for validation, which can lead to addiction and feelings of worthlessness. Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt argues that this digital exposure is a primary driver of the youth mental health crisis, urging parents to protect their children in the virtual world. As a school, we encourage parents to have open conversations with their children about these risks and work together to foster healthy digital habits. |
Instagram internal research, leaked by an employee in 2021, revealed the app is aware it creates anxious girls. “We make body image issues worse for one in three teen girls,” a slide from one internal presentation in 2019 stated.
Further leaks have shown how Instagram then leveraged that anxiety with invasive algorithms that bombard girls with even more “flawless body” content when they are at their lowest ebb, all to maximise profits. The tech platforms publicly deny causing any harm. Proponents argue they’re a catalyst for positive social change.
But our own children are telling us that social media creates a pressure cooker of expectations for teenagers to be what they’re not: perfect. Among the most illuminating interviews were those from older teens looking back on their smartphone childhoods.
Lila, 19, from Melbourne’s St Kilda, recalls how her phone addiction started in primary school. “By the time I was 13 I felt like I was going to die from the stress of keeping up appearances on TikTok. The pressure was horrible because I couldn’t escape. I wasn’t sleeping. I was waking up in the middle of the night to check my phone, to see what other people might be posting of me to make fun of me, or embarrass me. I was just freaking out all the time because social media made me so paranoid. I had to start taking anti-anxiety meds.”
At 16, Lila quit TikTok, blaming her fragile mental health on the social media apps she says crushed her self-esteem: “Girls are obsessed. They’re constantly making TikToks of themselves posing and pouting. They’re so desperate for people to say how pretty they are – but it’s all fake with filters. The more sexual stuff they post, the more the app sucks it up and demands more, and then they get weird men looking at their accounts and messaging them and it’s really, really dangerous. Everyone just feels so bad about themselves on social media because there’s always someone prettier or cooler than you and the reels just never stop. I’d be doomscrolling, lying in bed all day just rotting. I’m old enough now to understand what it was doing to me, but back then I was just freaking out all the time. We have to do something to rescue kids.”
Flynn, 17, from Perth, says of his TikTok habit: “It was like a drug … I hated it. It felt like a dirty way to spend time. I knew I could be doing things I truly loved instead of being blinded by this fake love TikTok was giving me. It was personalising itself to me – the algorithms, you know. It felt almost like I was having a relationship with it. It was giving me what I wanted and I was giving it all my time in return.”
I ask him if boys are choosing social media over a real relationship with a girl. “Absolutely. It’s easier, more available and less effort, with no risk of humiliation, embarrassment or failure. It’s there for you whenever you want, you don’t need to put any time or effort into it.”
Anika, 15, is worried about how her moods change when school or family commitments keep her away from her phone. “I get angry,” she says. “My mind feels agitated. I have physical symptoms. It’s very uncomfortable. It’s like I’m an addict and I need a hit. I feel much, much worse about myself because I know I’m missing out on what’s happening online.”
On Insta and TikTok, she tells me, “you’re competing with other people for admiration. If you get lots of likes and comments on your post you feel good. If you don’t, you feel worthless. If you get follow requests from people you admire, you feel good because that means your reputation is good. If someone ignores your request you feel like a loser. So I’m up one minute, down the next. It’s a rollercoaster of feelings. Except I know the more popular you are online, the better it reflects on who you are in real life. And that’s important. Except deep down, I know it’s all fake.”
I ask Anika if she believes social media is worse for girls than boys. “God yes. Boys just watch and share stuff but never post themselves, but girls invest everything in it. I know a girl who took an overdose of paracetamol and went to hospital. She really hated herself and was always on TikTok saying how bad her life was. I’d read her posts and then see her moping around in real life. It was really sad.”
Flynn, 17, agrees. ‘‘Social media preys on girls’ vulnerabilities. They use it so other people will think they’re beautiful and be jealous of them. Boys just use it just for entertainment. I see ripped guys in the gym on Insta, and find them motivating more than demoralising. Girls see ripped female bodies on Insta and see it as their failure.”
The American social psychologist and New York Times best-selling author Jonathan Haidt, 61, has been vehemently arguing the case against social media for children since 2019. He’s convinced that teenage phone addiction doesn’t simply correlate with the youth mental health crisis, it’s the driver of it. “Gen Z became the first generation in history to go through puberty with a portal in their pockets that called them away from the people nearby and into an alternative universe that was exciting, addictive, unstable, and unsuitable for children and adolescents,” he says.
Haidt wants parents to understand the consequences of this. “We have vastly overprotected our children in the real world – we have to give them more freedom. And we have vastly underprotected them in the virtual world – we give them an iPhone and an iPad and we say, ‘Here, we’re going to let you be guided into adulthood by a bunch of random people on the internet chosen by algorithms for their extremity’. That’s how you’re going to rewire your brain.”
In June TikTok kicked off a public relations offensive, firing its first salvo against the Australian Government’s election promise of a social media ban for the under 16s which covers Meta platforms Facebook and Instagram, as well as Snapchat, TikTok and Google-owned YouTube. TikTok was quick to splash ads across bus shelters, billboards and print trumpeting its success in “getting children to read”.
The social media ban is slated for December, but few youngsters I spoke to were concerned. “It’ll be so easy to get around,” says AJ, 14, from Coolbellup in Perth’s south. “Everyone’ll get a VPN [a virtual private network, which masks your IP address] and get a secure tunnel to the internet. I’ll just change my name, my age, my location, my country. I’ll literally become Polish and avoid the ban entirely.”