Behind the Filter: Self-Esteem & Social Media, with Bridgett Burrick Brown

Bridgett Burrick Brown 00:00 

Your body is going to change and your appearance is going to change and sometimes it could be something tragic like an illness or something it’s like you have to have the resilience there there can’t be like so much fragility around your appearance and when you’re focusing on it so much it’s a setup 

 

Judd Shaw 00:25 

Today’s episode is special for a few reasons. This is the first time I have a prior guest coming back on the show. And also because what we’re talking about today, I think we all feel the impact of in some way. And that’s self-esteem and body image in the age of social media.  You know, today we are going behind the filter. I’m so grateful to be joined by my friend and expert, Brigitte Burke-Brown with us today. Brigitte is an author, she’s a keynote speaker, a former model, and she’s an absolute expert on self-esteem and body image. And she knows exactly how social media is shaping our lives in both obvious and subtle ways. And I wanna start by sharing a few eye-opening statistics that really show just how serious this issue has become. First, there’s a recent study that showed that 94% of women feel pressured to look a certain way on social media. And 75% feel like they’ll never live up to the ideal image. There’s another report that found that 80% of young women actually feel worse about themselves when on social media. This issue is affecting teens too. I think more than half of teenagers use beauty filters regularly. The report shows that 61% say they actually feel worse about their own appearance when using these filters. You know, when I read these stats, it is absolutely hard not to be concerned. I know from a personal experience how powerful and damaging this issue can be. Someone in my close family struggled with an eating disorder. And I saw firsthand the toll that can take on someone in their family. I think many of us can relate to the anxiety, the desire to look different and the pressures to look perfect, especially online. This is a topic not to be missed. And Bridget, I am so grateful for you joining the conversation with me today.  

 

Bridgett Burrick Brown 02:40 

Oh, thank you for having me. I’m so grateful. I know. Right? I’m excited. I feel honored.  

 

Judd Shaw 02:46 

Well, I needed you here because this is a subject that I think is affecting us all. And you had a unique journey from modeling to becoming a health activist.  And from your experience in research, I’m curious as to how the exposure to filters and curated images are affecting our young adults today.  

 

Bridgett Burrick Brown 03:14 

So unfortunately it is getting worse and I feel like it’s getting worse quickly. When we talk about, well, something that’s very popular that’s getting talked about right now is the gaming scene. And there’s now rehabs around the United States because they’re going into these psychosis, like they don’t even know what reality is anymore.  And social engineering is also affecting us when it comes to filtering, face-tuning, retouching. Because we are either seeing these realities that aren’t real or we are constantly filtering, retouching our own images. The real big problem now is it used to be retouching was only done by professionals. Now everybody can retouch their own photos. So they almost have this world that’s on their device that they’re constantly looking at and they start to almost think that that’s their real life, right? Or they’re scrolling and they’re having this like compare and despair of why don’t I look like that? You know, why can’t I have that? But the reality is there’s nothing that anybody is looking at for the most part, you know, in the stats, like how many people are actually using beauty filters. I think one in five teens now, at least do a swipe. But I don’t think they’re just swiping. They are using like the skinny filter or the beauty filter. So the problem is, is you are looking at these images or you’re looking at your social media feed of your own images, but then you go and you look in the mirror and you don’t understand why they don’t match up. And it’s just, it pounds your self esteem. It pounds your self confidence. And it’s going past the actual filters and there’s a surgeon, forgetting his name right now, but he said that the amount of young 20 year olds coming in with completely retouched filtered photos and saying, make me look like this, it’s on the rise. So I think it’s a world right now that’s hard to escape if you’re constantly spending a lot of time on social media. We have this study that we found and I thought this was very interesting. They said that whether you were on social media and you were searching, seeking out like gardening and cooking and anything that wasn’t about beauty and fashion and, you know, they said that those people versus the people that were sort of seeking out like fit, spell and beauty, you know, routines and skincare routines, they had almost an equal amount of damage done to their self esteem and an equal amount of their susceptible to eating disorders. There’s a lot of gateway to eating disorders too, from this, you know, pressure to feel perfect.  

 

Judd Shaw 06:42 

Let’s talk about some of these tactics that when we’re talking about filters, so for our audience, for everybody to understand the kinds of things that we’re seeing, even adults, but particularly young adults, teenagers doing, in order to doctor these photos. They’re changing the color of their skin.  Oh, gosh, yes. Their skin enhancement.  

 

Bridgett Burrick Brown 07:06 

So the most common ones are they whiten their teeth, they bronze their skin, they use a skinny filter, so basically slims their whole body.  They do jaw work, and all you have to do is go in and do a little, like put the cursor on the jaw and it like does this, makes the like trending jaw, they give themselves a nose job, they widen their eyes, they create a AI version of themselves.  

 

Judd Shaw 07:40 

And you’re doing a lot of this leading work and research. And so I’m curious as to what now is the effect on the psyche when you are almost critically attacking your own image.  Here you are. And you then come up with this AI version of your same picture that you’ve now spent how much time just to post it or just to share it. So a whole sense of belonging is coming in, right? And now they sent that photo, but they know what they did to that photo. What’s that doing to the young minds?  

 

Bridgett Burrick Brown 08:18 

So I always, when I work with pre-teens, teens, college girls, and even us adults, I always say, think of what it means to filter the definition. It’s to alter or to fix an image. And I know, because some of my girlfriends do this regularly, they have almost like a formula now that they know to do when they’re going to retouch, edit their photo, right? So I know exactly what my one girlfriend does. She goes in, she slims, she does the like, where it’s like so foggy, I don’t know, it’s like the beauty filter. I actually, I probably should learn what they are more, but I’m like so against them, I’m like, nope, I don’t wanna know what they are. But they have a formula, and I think it’s reinforcing this belief that we are not good enough. I am not good enough, so I need to filter, I need to fix myself so I can become flawless, so I can become more perfect.  But the reality is, they’re never gonna achieve that. And they’re creating something online, on their digital device, that’s not real. So there’s like this disconnection from reality. I think they’re becoming very disconnected from their bodies because they’re constantly objectifying their bodies and their appearance. And it’s just not reality. Like the whole, there’s so much right now about having like this flawless skin where you don’t even have pores. And they’re trying to achieve it in real life because they see it all day long. So I think the biggest thing it’s doing to our psyches is it’s a setup to not be good enough, not feel good enough. And it compounds over time because if you make what you look like that important in life, it will be the thing that will take you down, I promise. Like it cannot be, like it should be the last, like I get it. I like to like have my hair cute. I like to feel like I’m in shape for myself. I love when my skin’s clear and nice. I love a cute outfit. I like to feel like I have a little swag. You know, I got my nails done yesterday, but it can’t be like top five most important things. It has to be down on that list because we age and we, our bodies change and our bodies are supposed to change. They go through different cycles. It’s not just puberty, you know, there’s now they’re saying there’s like the second puberty. That’s sort of like what the college girls are going into. And that’s sort of like prepping for babies and that’s supposed to happen. It’s okay. And then, you know, as women, we go through, like if you have babies and, you know, and then you go through a menopause, but your body is going to change and your appearance is going to change. And sometimes it could be something tragic, like an illness or something. It’s like, you have to have the resilience there. There can’t be like so much fragility around your appearance and when you’re focusing on it so much, it’s a setup.  

 

Judd Shaw 11:49 

Yeah, it’s more than a setup because of how the algorithm works on social media. That if my teenage daughter thinks her nose is too big, her lips aren’t plump enough, her hips now are too wide or something, I mean, the things they see and they, you know, she’ll come down and say, 

 

Bridgett Burrick Brown 12:09 

Oh, yeah.  

 

Judd Shaw 12:11 

I need plastic surgery as a teenager and real about it. And what happens then, they watch that and they watch it again. And now their curated feed is all about like no shops. And it reinforces this thought, I’m not good enough.  

 

Bridgett Burrick Brown 12:32 

Mm-hmm. And the thing is, is even if they’re like, no, I know, like I get a lot of like, we know what’s, we know it’s filters. We know it’s like, we understand. I’m like, but it’s this subtle kind of messaging that’s constantly, because even if you’re scrolling past it, you’ve seen it. It’s done something, it’s imprinted something into your mind, right? So then if you’re actually taking some time and actually really looking at it, it’s really getting in there.  

 

Judd Shaw 13:05 

most of us acknowledge that there’s a problem out there. Yeah. And it’s a difficult and challenging problem because we’re also talking about trying to work with teenagers and young adults who just have not experienced the kind of things and harms that we’re saying is in their future. Yeah. And I think this kind of pressure feels never ending.  And we know that teenagers are especially spending more and more time on these devices. But we also know that part of dealing with the problem starts with us as adults. A lot of us are focusing on how to address the problem for the teenager or the young adult. But I think that starts right with us.  

 

Bridgett Burrick Brown 14:05 

Yeah.  

 

Judd Shaw 14:06 

What are your thoughts on some of the ways that adults can begin to help young adults and children learn healthier, more resilient ways of dealing with body image that don’t lead to eating disorders, that don’t lead to suicide, that don’t lead to people giving up on themselves because they’re chasing an image they can’t achieve. And so how do they learn if us adults are doing it too?  Yeah, absolutely. What are your thoughts here?  

 

Bridgett Burrick Brown 14:44 

I mean, I like to always answer this question very mindfully because I think parents, we can shame ourselves very quickly. But it really, I always say like, I’m healing myself from my daughter. So I think it’s really easy to be like, oh, I’m doing that, but it’s okay. Like she’s not gonna notice. They notice everything. And that’s like cliche, but it’s so true.  So I think if we wanna cultivate a healthy body image or a healthy, I’m starting to call it like digital wellness, they wanna have like positive digital wellness in their life. We really need to be modeling it ourselves. So I just, I’ll tell you a little story. So I just got my daughter’s nine and I just got her school photos back on the order farm. There was three options to retouch in elementary school’s photo. It was you could whiten her teeth, you could smooth her skin, or you could get rid of the flyaways. And I do this work every single day. And I was like, oh, should I? And then I’m like, oh my God. It was almost like this trigger. And I do this work every day. So I ended up making this video about it. It’s on my Instagram. And I really thought like, what do I wanna say about this? Besides like, hey, photographers, don’t put that on elementary school’s order farms, duh. But I do think probably, I’m just guessing, the parents that retouched their own photos, probably were like, oh, I could just get rid of the flyaways or like, oh, I’ll whiten their teeth. And it’s like those little photos when you were little are so cute. And like part of it is like the ridiculousness that like ends up in the photos. The authenticity of like that.  

 

Judd Shaw 16:52 

you it’s sunburned the day before. Yeah, and like your hair is like…  

 

Bridgett Burrick Brown 16:55 

disaster and like you had something in your teeth, but my thought was like, you know, it starts perhaps with the parents stopping the retouching because I hate to say it, but a lot of my friends retouched their photos. So, and like whether they have boys, because I know some people are like, oh, I have boys, whatever, you know, it affects them as well.  

 

Judd Shaw 17:25 

And some of the behavior is subconscious. Like totally.  We wanna make sure that I would like nothing for any of the audience to feel shamed. In fact, the things that I learn, I give myself that grace in all of those mistakes that I’ve made. But if we were to talk about the actionable steps that caregivers and parents can take, before talking about what they could do with the teenagers, can you help explain some of those other things that we adults do in our everyday life that may be mirroring the wrong behavior for our children?  

 

Bridgett Burrick Brown 18:09 

Yeah, and I wanna just say one thing with the shame really quickly is like, I have this mantra, everybody that knows me, I say it all the time and it’s like little by little. You know, like I came from having to be perfect with the way I looked for a really long time from the industry, being in the modeling industry. And I’m not totally natural and like, I don’t claim to be, my goal is to like little by little get there. I’ve definitely been able to like let go more of like having to be super, super small. And like, so I think it’s having this, first of all, I don’t want us to judge any of us. I do think you do what makes you feel good, you know? It’s sort of, I think when things tip into this unhealthy obsessive, if you’re ruminating about stuff, that’s maybe the moment you pause and you say, hmm, maybe I could work on this, I could heal this a little bit. Because I would feel better and probably I would pass that onto my daughter, you know?  So I think just like we try to say, don’t judge moms whether they’re working or they’re stay at home or they’re this or that, like I think around this conversation, it needs to be the same. But some things that we can do is, we can be really mindful of how we are on our devices. We were chatting about this before, but one of the issues is like for parents, I know like my daughter will be eating dinner and I’m doing like 20 things on my phone. And sometimes I’m working and part of my work is on social media, but you know, I’m also ordering groceries or I’m registering her for a dance class.  So I think being really open about that with her, like, oh, I’m ordering groceries right now. I’m just not scrolling. We can curate a different feed than we currently have. I think if you could stop and say, just take a really honest look at your feed. Just scroll, scroll for 10 minutes, an hour, however long you wanna scroll. Don’t scroll for an hour, but you know. And just say like, am I only seeing people that look like me? You know, does everybody have white skin? Is everybody thin? Is everybody, so I have a lot of like fit kind of like people that are like, I wanna inspire to be like, because there’s a lot of body diversity that’s really beautiful in the world. We don’t see it enough in media. It’s starting to get a little bit better, but there’s so many beautiful skin colors and sizes and not everybody has the same abled bodies.  So open up that world for yourself first, because you, and it can be hard at first. Like I have a lot of different bodies on my feed now. And at first I was like, oh, I don’t know if I wanna see that body. You know, I had a moment, you know, and that’s also like, don’t judge yourself. We all have biases. Like we all do. If anybody says they don’t, they’re lying. You know what I mean? So it’s like, but just try to expand little by little. So that’s a big part. Another thing we can do is really try to have body acceptance for yourself. So, and also little by little. You’re not gonna fall in love with your body tomorrow. You’re not. And even like I said, like I’ve let go of a lot, but I, you know, I have days all the time where I’m like, oh, aren’t I skinny?  

 

Bridgett Burrick Brown 22:09 

Or like, you know, I think it’s, they’re a lot less than they used to be, but it still comes up. So just start to say, I appreciate my body. I appreciate my body for what it does. I get to have this experience with you because I have legs that walk, you know, and I have eyes that work. So start having sort of this, I guess, appreciation first.  A big thing with that that will go into our children is how we speak about ourselves. So some of it’s just in our head, a lot of it is. So we can pause and say, I’m not going to do that. But speaking about ourselves out loud, and we do it a lot. Especially women, like just moms, because we have a lot of pressure on ourselves, especially post babies and stuff like, oh, you know, or they’ll just be talking to their husband or their friend, not thinking their children here. Get out of the mirror, getting out of the mirror, get those scales away, kind of just think of how what are you doing in your life that could help you heal little by little. And then I really think like media literacy, like really learning about, oh, that like, I can spot anything that’s retouched, but a lot of people can’t. So really learn about what is retouched, what is Facetune? Like I teach a lot of that in my in my workshops, I do.  

 

Judd Shaw 23:51 

It’s so interesting, there’s a friend Joey from a community that we share and he was on my podcast and he shared that for his young son as he travels, he goes and gets a children’s picture book, but each book is based on something with diversity, like it’ll be Native Americans or the Cubans of the Mary, like always stories about diversity so that his child is reading about diversity, similarly are we looking at diversity or are we curating this one image that we’re just going to constantly be looking at, but some of those things that you’re mentioning really I resonated with.  For instance, with my kids, I like to start and play the game sometimes when they go, this doesn’t look good, I don’t like this. I’ll push it back and say, well, what do you like about your body? Let’s start at our toes. Do you like your toes? I like my toes. Do you like your toes? All right, we’ll go. What about your heel? Do you like your heel? Dad, heel? Wait, this is great. I love Tommy. I’m like, do you ever see some heels? There’s cracked heels, there’s good heels, there’s smooth heels, different heels for different things. You like your heels? She’s like, I never thought about it. Well, what do you think now? And we will literally climb up the body. What happens is they realize either they haven’t thought about the body parts that they like or haven’t thought about the body part at all because it just hasn’t come up on the cure that their elbows can be constructed into a more beautiful elbow or something.  And we play this game. We’re like, let’s do the body check. I don’t want to do the body check. We’re doing the body check. You want to start head or toe and we’ll just go through it.  

 

Bridgett Burrick Brown 25:42 

I think a way you can start sort of appreciating your body too is know that maybe you’re gonna like your toes better than you like your elbows. That’s okay.  It’s like, okay, just observing it. So learning sort of how to dress for your body, but not in the way that we think, right? The like dress for your body. It’s just like dress to make yourself feel good and feel comfortable. Like we don’t have to shove ourselves. Like the corsets are really in right now. I don’t know if you’ve seen the corsets trending, but girls are starting to like clinch their waist and they’re terribly uncomfortable. It’s actually very dangerous too.  But learn a style that you feel really good in. You feel really good in and sort of stick with it. Like find your uniform and so like your parts that you enjoy and like feel good too, you know.  

 

Judd Shaw 26:47 

And you know, the other thing as an adult with kids on this body image issue is that I also are mindful that when sometimes on my computer, I don’t want them to see me mindfully scrolling when I’m trying to tell them to be cognizant of their screen time. And so to your point, if I’m ordering food or I’m doing, I’ll incorporate, like, do you wanna help me order food?  Do you wanna, particularly as the younger they get, the more I want them involved, like watch mom or dad work a little bit. Like, here’s what I’m doing. So they’re also reinforcing that you’re really not on social media because I know for me, I’ve said that and they’re like, oh yeah, sure you’re not.  

 

Bridgett Burrick Brown 27:35 

Yeah, it’s also these devices are just ingrained in their lives. Like they think they need to take pictures of everything. They need to video everything. So I have found with my daughter, like, how can I make her iPad not about because I have swiped her iPad. Poor girl.  Nothing on it. But sometimes she’s like, I want to like, you know, so she has music. So she’ll like make up a dance and record herself. She doesn’t put it on anything. But I’ve tried to be creative with that. I like getting them in.  

 

Judd Shaw 28:11 

You know, and that’s the other thing, too, is when we’re getting them involved, or we’re interacting with them, is to be mindful, are we commenting on their looks and appearance? Or are we commenting on their character, their values, and, you know, the accomplishments or even the attempts?  

 

Bridgett Burrick Brown 28:34 

Well, and I think when I said we have to heal ourselves, that was one of the big ways I healed my own body image. So start with that. We can start with that as parents. We can say, what’s like really cool about me? I mean, I feel like I have fallen in love with myself in the last like four years more than I had. So great.  Those like, you know, all those years I was trying to be perfect. Because now I’m like, I’ve really like found the things about me or like people have complimented me and I’ve let it sink in. I have nurtured parts of me that I knew were in there and I just need they just needed a little bit of like TLC. So I agree. It’s like when we’re telling and also teaching our children by modeling, like, Judd, you have the best energy. I love your, you know, I love your energy. Or that was so brave. Like I saw how scared you were and you were so brave. That was cool. So think of other things you can sort of build up. And I don’t think people have asked me like, so do you not think we should tell our children that they’re beautiful? Absolutely not. Tell them that they’re beautiful. I tell Scarlett all the time, I’m like, you are so beautiful inside out now.  Because I don’t think it’s like we do have eyes and we do have appearances and like, but sort of, I think going back to like the social media scroll, it’s also just if you have the luxury to travel or I love what you said your friend did, you know, bought his son those books is like expanding our worlds. You know, the beauty ideal, which is like Eurocentric, white, tall, you know, that’s not the only thing that’s beautiful in the world. There’s so much.  

 

Judd Shaw 30:41 

So one of the toughest parts of all of this beyond identifying the problem, attacking the problem is really finding a healthy balance on social media. Because of those statistics are so alarming that the more they’re using it, the more damage they’re creating. And it’s not necessarily realistic just to take a phone away. I know that there are a lot of people out there that say, you complain about it, you complain about it, just take the phone away.  I know. And I think that rips something from children too, because to your point, they’re now grown up with this technology. And I don’t know if that’s necessarily trying to reinforce a positive mirror or just punishing. Yeah, those are so- 

 

Bridgett Burrick Brown 31:27 

social on it. Yes. That’s the big problem.  

 

Judd Shaw 31:30 

community to it. There’s a lot.  

 

Bridgett Burrick Brown 31:32 

A lot of psychologists that say taking the phone away is actually really damaging.  

 

Judd Shaw 31:38 

You’re pulling their community as well, right? So do you have any advice for parents and caregivers who are trying to set these healthy boundaries for their kids?  

 

Bridgett Burrick Brown 31:52 

Yeah, I would, I want to start by just acknowledging how tough it is, especially if you have teenagers and up, because I think a lot of the lectures I’ve been to recently, when the parents share, it’s like, I feel like if almost around my daughter’s age, like 9, 10 and below, it’s almost like the data came in and we sort of paused stuff, we’re a little, there’s some of us that are like, oh God, I didn’t pause it soon enough. But I mean, there’s moms that are crying because they’re just like, my son is 15 and like, I don’t know what to do.  So again, little by little, but I think giving them, if they’re old enough and they can understand, give them some of the data, start educating them. There’s a lot of good education on, I think the social, no, the anxious generation, that book that a lot of people are reading right now, there’s a lot of good data, I think on that website. We could source them. That’s great. We’ll add it. We can add some resources on the link. But I think, you know, start sharing some of the research with them and scare them a little bit and not because you have to make it up because it is scary. I think you can as a household try to have like these social media fasts almost, it doesn’t have to be like a week, it could be an hour, hey, or like Saturdays, like we put our phones in this bin, you know.  

 

Judd Shaw 33:33 

You know, what I’m doing in my home is, again, I’m not the expert, but I am a parent and I like to try to go back to mirroring. And so what I’ll do is at a certain hour, nine o’clock at nine 30, 10 o’clock, I go off my phone. I’m like, listen, there’s no one who’s gonna call me now unless it’s an emergency or someone’s in hospital, whatever, there’s, I don’t need it. I wanna interact, let’s communicate, let’s hang out, let’s watch a show.  Like we can, you can still get off one, it’s really getting off the social media stuff. You can still circle around and watch TV and that’s okay. But it’s just trying to find ways to connect. And the healthy boundaries that I found are able to be set when I do them with them.  

 

Bridgett Burrick Brown 34:20 

Yes, we’ll have rules, like have whatever you want to set up for your family. Like we have a rule that when we sit down for dinner, the phones are not at the table. If we’re at a restaurant, they are in my bag or they’re in my husband’s pocket, you know? We are having a conversation because once you let the phones bleed into the dinner table and the bed and the… So I think what I am going to try to do and what I’ve heard from other experts is like have these really firm boundaries about when you’re using your social media.  And then maybe help them curate their feed. Let’s look at what you’re, you know, be nosy. Like my, I have, I do this therapist therapy session, but it’s like for my daughter. It’s like fully focused on my daughter. She’s a child psychologist. It’s wonderful. And she’s always like, your daughter doesn’t need privacy right now. She’s nine. And I’m like, oh yeah, because sometimes I’ll be like, you know, she’s like, she doesn’t need privacy. Her door does not need to be shut. You can go through her iPad. And so go through and look at what they’re doing. And then I think keeping them busy. Like I started keeping Scarlett super busy. Not like we’re gonna need to over-schedule them, but get them interested in other things than just being on their phone. Because if they have a hobby that they love, they’re gonna escape into that, not in their phone.  

 

Judd Shaw 35:57 

Yeah. And you know, on the, on the scaring part of it too is, I also try to do the silly part where I’ll send posts to them and comment like, look how overly filtered this is.  Yeah. Like this, is this even a real human? And so I’m just trying to kind of plant the seed because I feel that if I can make them laugh at it, like look how silly this is, maybe they start to think how silly it would be if they start to do that.  

 

Bridgett Burrick Brown 36:27 

It’s also education, you’re sort of, you know, saying, hey, here’s a little education, I’m gonna be funny about it to not make it so serious. It’s interesting because your girls are older. So I’m not necessarily there yet, you know, I’m just hearing. Yeah, definitely.  But it’s, you know, Scarlett asked me, used to ask me every day, why can’t I be on TikTok? I’m just gonna be on TikTok. It’s also, there’s zero regulation on social media. It’s like the wild, wild west, I mean, it’s terrifying.  

 

Judd Shaw 37:00 

It’s our responsibility to do those regulations as parents and caregivers, but it’s also that responsibility starts with ourselves. I think what came most out of this for me was to be cognizant about how I’m showing up.  Am I saying, you know, comments like, I can’t get my butt in these jeans. I’m stepping on the scale. I’m staring and constantly every mirror I pass. What are my kids watching me do and how can I mirror the behavior that I love for them to reflect? And so that’s not constantly getting on the scale or making a comment when I get off. It’s not talking about my defects. It’s not talking about the things I don’t love and my diet. It’s trying to focus on those positive things. And I was just wondering, do you have any final thoughts or just real encouragement for our listeners, particularly those parents and caregivers who are struggling along with us in this digital age of social media?  

 

Bridgett Burrick Brown 38:10 

I think we have to give ourselves grace. We have to give each other grace.  And I think it’s continuing to have these conversations, continue to educate ourselves. And I think have the intention to have a real honest look at how you are and how you wanna feel and little by little sort of set the intention to go towards that.  

 

Judd Shaw 38:43 

There’s some real great takeaways today from how we can show up as adults, how we can start to heal the problem with ourselves, how we can set some healthy boundaries with our kids, being just consciously aware of what’s going on and the stats and the dangers, and slowly by slowly tackling the problem.  

 

Bridgett Burrick Brown 39:11 

Yeah, and you know, to end with an inspiring stat, I read that teens, specifically, kind of taking a break from social media just for a couple weeks, they had a 50% increase in how they felt about themselves.  

 

Judd Shaw 39:29 

Isn’t that remarkable? Yeah, so and going  

 

Bridgett Burrick Brown 39:32 

with the little by little, we don’t have to take it all away. It’s not reality, it’s in our lives.  We were saying this earlier, it’s kind of like educating on sex and drugs now. It’s just something, a reality we’re dealing with. So just take a little bit of it away. Where can you get really creative in your life?  

 

Judd Shaw 39:51 

You know, I think that these are great resources and great information for those parents and individuals who want to deep dive further into this, or maybe are having a more difficult time challenging with the issue, you’re doing so much out there, Bridget, how can someone reach out and tap into the things you’re doing?  

 

Bridgett Burrick Brown 40:17 

Yeah, so the best way is to sign up for our newsletter. You can go to our website, beyondbeautyproject.com. We’re very active on Instagram, and we post everything that we’re offering there, but we have workshops, and I do keynotes, and we have all kinds of things that we’re doing. But sign up for the newsletter, because you’ll be in the know all the time.  

 

Judd Shaw 40:42 

That’s great stuff. We need more activists like you. Thank you so much, Bridget. You have given us so much to think about and some really practical steps to helping our kids and ourselves build quite frankly, healthier self-esteem dealing with social media.  And for our listeners, thank you for tuning into Behind the Armor. I’ll also link the original episode of Bridget and I on our first show, Behind the Armor. And if you found today’s episode valuable, please share it with others who might benefit from this conversation. Let’s really keep these discussions going and support each other in showing up as our truest selves. Thanks for joining us.