For my choice of article, I chose an article that was about the effect of social media and the culture it produces on young girls and teens. This article is titles “Camera-Ready: Young Women’s Appearance-Related Social Media Consciousness” and was written by  Higgins, Widman, Nesi, and Choukas-Bradley. To explain further, this article discusses the impact of social media on mental health, as well as physical health. I chose this article because not only was it one of the topics I was debating on choosing, but it is also a topic I find very interesting. I feel that this is an important topic to discuss because so many people of all ages are impacted by the toxicity social media produces and it greatly impacts the younger generations. I feel that social media is more prominent in middle school aged girls now than it was when I was in middle school. The beauty related pressures are certainly increased, although the world is certainly kinder to those that aren’t the cookie-cutter size 2 girls. It has become a game to guess wether or not a girl is 14 or 23 on social media, which forces girls to not only put pressure on themselves to look older and sexier, but also forces them to grow up faster and face the challenge of predators thinking they are older than they are. It also encourages people to constantly compare themselves to others, and rate their own beauty on the amount of “likes” on their most recent selfie. The culture created by social media for physical appearance has essentially eliminated the tried and true “awkward phase”. One of the main arguments of this article was that the newest pressure on todays youth is to always look camera ready, just in case a photo was to be taken and posted on social media. This pressure forces young girls to constantly look their best, and to always act as they do on social media. I plan to connect this article to my essay by connecting YoYo Ma’s essay on the importance of including Art in education by explaining how if teens are given a creative outlet that can distract from the addiction of social media.