More Than a Filter: Helping Teen Girls Find Their Worth Beyond Social Media

In January 2026, UK ministers launched a public consultation on whether to ban social media access for under-16s. With growing concern about the impact of smartphones and social platforms on young people’s mental health, it feels like a significant time to highlight some of the struggles teenage girls are facing.

In January, we held a Know Your Worth training day in Manchester welcoming and equipping a fantastic new cohort of Esteem Builders. These school and youth professionals are now ready to deliver our 8-week self-esteem course to teenage girls in schools, charities and community settings. It was a day full of energy, honesty and, unsurprisingly, a lot of conversation about social media.

Many of us working with teenage girls are seeing some of the negative impacts that too much social media is having. Big challenges like online bullying, constant comparison, pressure to curate a “perfect” image, and deep struggles around identity and self-worth are a regular occurrence for many of the girls we have the privilege of working with. It seems that social media can amplify insecurities at a stage of life when teens are already asking big questions about who they are and where they belong.

On our Know Your Worth course, we intentionally limit and often fully omit phone-use during the sessions. We find that it helps our girls really show up and be present in the moment. For some, it’s a struggle initially, for others, a relief.

Session four of our course focuses specifically on social media and its connection to self-esteem. We explore how the way we feel about ourselves and  how we treat others in real life can be magnified online. This is often where some of the most honest and impactful conversations happen and one activity that consistently stands out involves the girls designing the front and back of a paper plate. On the front, they write words that represent how they present themselves on social media. On the back, they write words that reflect how they actually feel behind the scenes.

The contrast is often stark.

Happy. Popular. Hilarious.…compared with…Anxious. Drained. Not good enough.

The struggle for girls to put on a front is hard and draining, and we love to remind them that they are valued, regardless of how many followers, likes or comments they receive online.

While running the Know Your Worth course last week, one teenage girl told me she had reached a point where she’d simply had enough and that social media was draining her, so she deleted all of her accounts.

When asked if she felt like she was missing out, she laughed and said she definitely wasn’t. Instead, she shared that she felt much more grounded. “People can always give me a call or send me a message,” she said, calmly and confidently.

That’s why our course doesn’t just focus on the risks of social media, but on growing self-esteem, resilience, critical thinking and healthy digital habits too. 

When we have healthy self-esteem, we know that our true identity is far richer and deeper than anything social media can reflect. When teenage girls begin to understand this they start to relate to social media more critically and less personally. It begins to have less power over them and helps them to grow power instead. Self-esteem impacts everything including the decisions teenage girls are making regarding their social media use (or lack thereof) and we believe that higher self-esteem can drastically impact their relationship with social media - for the better.