Back in February, we told you all about Dove’s awesome initiative to measure the positive or negative effects of your tweets. Excited about the project, I decided to sign up for a reading of my own personal Twitter history. Well, the results are in. The #SpeakBeautiful Effect officially kicked off at SXSW, and I, as promised, received a breakdown of my tweets.
So here’s what happened. According to Dove’s research for @victoriamoorhou, I don’t tend to tweet about body image often but my words are considered 75 percent positive. Hey, I’ll take that! They even gave me a list of popular positive and negative words used on Twitter — I reportedly used 2 positive and 0 negative. I have to say, I was pretty proud of myself.
However, new Dove research suggests that some don’t even realize that they might be tweeting hurtful things — only 9 percent of women admit to engaging in negative behavior online. What’s more, while Dove reports 72 percent of girls experience beauty critiques at least once a week.
But there is good news! The brands research also suggests that 65 percent of girls want to learn how to tweet, and use social media in general, in a positive way. Hopefully, expanding our education on the effects of social media will yield tools in the future to help us do just that!
While social media is a space we all go to share things we love (a new haircut selfie, a #TBT, your drugstore beauty haul), unfortunately, it can also be a place where women everywhere experience a ton of negativity and unwanted judgement about their appearances.
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Whether it’s in the form of harsh comments or just comparing ourselves to others, the problem is real, and I think we can all agree it needs to stop. I certainly don’t want Instagram to make me feel bad about myself.
Well, Dove realized this huge issue about a year ago when they launched the #SpeakBeautiful campaign. The initiative has reportedly helped decrease the negative convos about beauty by an impressive 36.8 percent, and they’re just getting started. In honor of the campaign’s first anniversary, Dove decided to continue the fight against social media judgement with technology that will analyze your own tweets. You read that right.
It’s called the #SpeakBeautiful Effect, and it’s meant to help you realize the significance of what you say. All you have to do is retweet Dove’s call to action, and you’ll be signed up for a personal analysis.
So why is it important to identify the impact of what you say, especially as millennial women? According to plus-size fashion blogger and tech expert Sarah Conley, it’s all about acknowledging the power of words and what they can do.
“Millennials were early adapters to online activism, and we are seeing this in many areas, including politics and social issues, but it doesn’t stop there. Women in fashion and beauty communities are increasingly taking a stand to promote inclusivity – whether calling for designers to make clothing for a wider range of body types or speaking out against body-shaming. As issues surrounding inclusivity and body-positivity continue to impact women and girls online, I believe it’s important to understand how the messages we put out affect ourselves and others. Words have power, and if we start to speak more positivity about ourselves in our online communities, we have the ability to impact the broader conversation about beauty, both online and in real life,” she said.
Talk about a #powerful statement! We hope that initiatives like these will help put an end to negativity online. Because really, it’s a problem no one should ever have to deal with.
This article originally appeared on MIMI Chatter