            In my research paper I would like to research how participation in social media affects young adults' self-esteems through social comparison. I am interested in answering this question because I am in the age group that I want to learn about and I observe it all the time amongst friends. Another reason is because there are a lot of positives and negatives in social media but that does not stop people from using it. This affects me by being surrounded by people who use it constantly as well as being a user myself. I have had many interactions with the negative effects social can give someone because of the social comparison that it causes. One of the experiences that I had with self-esteem and social media was with my roommate. She paid for likes on her pictures on Instagram to make it look like she is more popular. From this experience it makes me assume that she subconsciously raised her self-esteem because she is basing her self-worth on the amount of likes she receives on a picture. From my research question I would like to find out if this is a common occurrence or if it is just extreme for some people. I am qualified to write about this research question because I am a user of social media and I fit in the demographic. I will also be able to find research and data that will support my antidotal experiences.

              The first source that will aid in answering my research question is Friend Networking Sites and Their Relationship to Adolescents' Well-Being and Social Self-Esteem by Patti M. Valkenburg, Jochen Peter, and Alexander P. Schouten. This is a study done on adolescents, which refers to people ages 10-19, who receive feedback from their peers on a social media site. The researchers used a friend networking site, frequency of reactions to profiles, tone of reactions to profiles, relationships established through the social networking site, social self-esteem, well-being, and statistical analysis to conduct their study. This resulted in a strong correlation between positive feedback and high self-esteem and negative feedback with low self-esteem. The values of the authors are for the well-being of children. They wanted to test the value of social media with the study by determining if it is helping or hurting these individuals. These authors are credible because it was done by a few of the University of Amsterdam's phycology department professors. These professors find that the relationship between social media and self-esteem is more negative than positive.

              The next source that will be able to answer my research question is Effects of Self-presentation and Social Media Use in Attainment Ideals by Rebecca K. Britt. This study used multiple regression models to be able to test and understand the relationship between a beauty-related social media use, self-esteem, and enjoyment. This study ended with similar results as the first source that I used. The participants who used a more beauty-related social media had a higher self-esteem because of how their friends through social media reacted towards their posts. The values for this author is to understand why young adults rely on social media to improve their popularity and increase their self-esteems. This author is credible because I found it through the Thomas Copper Library site and each of her citations are from known Universities. This author believed that positive and negative self-esteem was directly related with social media before this study was finished.

            The final source I will use to answer my research question is Using Social Media for Social Comparison and Feedback-Seeking: Gender and Popularity Moderate Associations with Depressive Symptoms by Jacqueline Nesi and Mitchell J. Prinstein. This stud used 619 high school students to test the relationship between technology used including cell phones, Facebook, and Instagram and how those encouraged the want to be more popular. According to this study, students who used those technologies every day for long periods of time were more likely to be depressed with low self-esteem and a want to be popular. The values of these authors are for well-being of adolescents who use lots of technology. These authors are credible because they are from the scientific Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology and it was written in 2015. These authors believe technology use definitely has a negative effect on adolescent's behavior along with their self-esteems.

             I feel that this research question is arguable because everyone has their own opinion on social media and it can positively and negatively effect someone. Within these three sources I found that each of these studies had the same outcome, negative affects on self-esteem. At first I thought that the effect of social media on someone's self-esteem varied depending on the person and their own self confidence that they had. After reading through these studies I found myself believing that social media has a negative affect on everybody because of the way people compare what they have to someone else. Even when someone has very high self-esteem their friends who may have low self-esteem can negatively affect them. This happens a lot because most people listen to what their friends have to say and when those friends are being negative, people tend to get the same negative consequences. I think that this question is good because there is loads of information that can answer it along with my own personal experiences.

