【明報專訊】Self-esteem is one's own perception of oneself and a subjective judgement about one's abilities. That includes whether one is confident about oneself and whether one is well-liked by others. People with higher self-esteem are more confident about their ability to face up to and solve difficulties.

Five building blocks of self-esteem

- Mission (the belief that one grasps the meaning and goals of life),

- Competence (the belief that one has the ability to learn new things and handle challenges),

- Security (a feeling of being valued and protected, and that the others can be trusted),

- Selfhood (accepting oneself and believing oneself is unique among a group of people),

- Affiliation (a feeling that one is connected with the others and that one will be accepted and approved).

Experts: "Like" culture causes depression

"The Insidious Evils of 'Like' Culture", published in the Wall Street Journal, discusses how the "like" culture might cause depression. The "like" button was first introduced in 2007 on the FriendFeed website, and became popular on all social media platforms after it was adopted by facebook in 2009. Some social workers and psychologists have reported cases in which people sought help because they were worried that their comments were not "liked" by others to such an extent that they had depression. This shows that some young people rely on being "liked" as the source of self-esteem. The article argues that the "like" culture is the antithesis of the healthy development of self-esteem.

The pursuit of slimness × self-esteem

Modern women equate slimness with beauty. Many young people want to be slim, while some people become less confident just because they put on a few pounds. There are cases in which young girls, who generally are more conscious about their figures than others, developed eating disorder, anorexia and bulimia when they tried to stay slim. The Caritas Youth and Community Service said that the mainstream society ceaselessly teases overweight people, so much so that young people were indoctrinated from a young age to think that being overweight is a negative quality. The service said that everyone is special, and schools should teach students to be tolerant and understand that body shapes are not everything. As long as one finds what one is good at doing, one does not have to be afraid of being teased.

Survey: grass-roots students have falling self-esteem

The Teach Unlimited Foundation(教育無邊界), a non-profit organisation, collected questionnaires from 1022 secondary school students between 2013 and 2015 about their self-esteem and learning attitudes at the beginning of the term. It was found that the score for self-esteem fell from 69.6 points in 2013 to 68.2 points in 2015, showing that students did not feel good about themselves. As most of the students who took part in the survey came from low-income families, the organisation opined that society had to give special care to young people from lower social strata and understand the challenges facing them. Additional resources were needed to help improve their self-esteem, the organisation said.

Related concepts:

．mental health

．peer group

．positive attitude

[通通識 第480期]