The following document is my final research essay for Sociology 105. I took this course my first semester as a freshman. Throughout the class, students had to choose a topic to do research about for the entire semester. The topic that I chose to discuss in this essay asks the research question : “how does social media affect body image perception of teenage girls?” In this essay, I describe the various negative effects that various social media sites like Instagram and Facebook have on the self esteem of adolescent girls. I enjoyed this class because of how my mind was opened up to see how the different elements of society work.