Performance pressure

Young women are weighed down by feelings of being judged by their peers, and social media mores are making it worse.

- LOUISE CHUNN

Rosalind Gill is a 60-year-old British sociologist who has written a book called Perfect: Feeling Judged on Social Media. As we are busy midlife women with work and family responsibilities, we agree to do this interview over Zoom, from one side of London to another. By the end of an hour-long conversation, we are soul sisters.

Both mothers of 23-year-old daughters, we unite in concern and sadness for young women today as they struggle to cope with the anxiety-laden, zig-zag emotions that their social media-led lives create. If we had been in the same room, I think we would have hugged each other before we said goodbye.

Gill, professor of social and cultural analysis at City University, part of the University of London, did not set out to write this book. She'd planned to write one focusing on how young people interacted with online mental health apps during Covid lockdowns. "But when I started talking with these young women, that wasn't what they wanted to talk about. They just wanted to talk about their social media."

And what did she hear? "That they really, really struggle. It almost surprised them. It wasn't until they put down their phone and sat talking with a much older, empathetic person that they really realised how hard they were finding it."

Depression, loneliness, fear of judgment, hyper-vigilance, hyper-self-criticism, fear of being excluded, feelings of addiction, isolation, fear of getting it wrong, fear of missing out, fear of looking unpopular, sexual harassment by strangers, feeling not good enough, fear of looking fake, feeling you will never, ever match up to the perfect people you see on the phone that is almost never out of your hand.