Shruti Seth: Social media is putting too much pressure on youngsters
Actor Shruti Seth talks about the negative pressure that social media and hustle culture put on the younger generation to conform to certain societal standards.
Actor Shruti Seth recently took to Instagram to share a thought-provoking post, as she expressed her concern about the younger generation being “cursed with the ills of social media.” She also highlighted the troubling online trend that encourages people to hustle to become successful “at any cost.”
Talking about how social media can negatively impact and pressure young people to conform to certain standards, she recounts a moment when her 10-year-old daughter Alina, asked her for a sheet mask. “As an actor, it is very difficult for me to explain to her that all this is not required at her age,” Seth tells us.
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She elaborates, “As a woman in my 40s, I get overwhelmed by it; I can’t even imagine what must be the pressure on a young 20-year-old who is just starting out. I’m sure girls who are in their 20s are feeling the burden to look younger, or feeling scared of aging and getting lines on their faces.”
While she acknowledges that caring for oneself is important, she adds, “There is no harm in preserving and looking after your body, but don’t turn to quick fixes. I’m not putting a moral colour to it at all, but there needs to be a conversation that addresses the positives and negatives, so that people make informed decisions.”
The 46-year-old also finds that messaging that is directed at young people on social media is only making matters worse. “The idea of getting rich at any cost is being normalised. It’s putting too much pressure on people, especially the younger generation. There’s a whole bunch of new kids who are feeling the pressure to be more, do more and have more. It’s just terrible messaging. On top of that, [social media is] telling them that the world is not kind to people who don’t make it.”
Instead of pushing young people to achieve certain goals at all costs, Seth asserts, those with more experience need to teach youngsters how to handle both success and failure. “As a society, we need to think about how we are contributing to this conversation, we should be teaching them to be more resilient. There are good and bad days and they need to take both in stride,” she ends.