After a long day of classes, Santa Rosa Junior College student Ophelia Favela opens TikTok. Within minutes, she is deep in an algorithm with gym routines, glowing skin and curated “get ready with me” videos.
As she scrolls for hours on end, Favela begins to compare herself to the influencers on her screen, leaving her questioning her appearance, daily routines and whether she lives up to the seemingly effortless “perfection” flooding her feed.
Favela, a first-year psychology major, admits she spends more than five hours a day on TikTok, but she is not the only one.
“TikTok might be the one I mostly use,” Favela said. “It’s just so easy to scroll.”
As TikTok continues to dominate daily screen time among college-aged women, SRJC students describe how the app’s algorithm-driven content promotes unrealistic standards that have lasting effects on confidence, behavior and self-image.
A 2025 Pew Research Center survey found that nearly half of young adults aged 18-29 use TikTok daily, with women using it slightly more frequently than men.
According to 19th News, videos and pictures on image-based social media platforms can trigger intense episodes of self-comparison in young girls. With their still-developing brains, they may process this self-comparison in ways that can pose real risks to their mental health.
Several young women at SRJC described a similar pressure to fit in, meet unrealistic beauty standards and tailor their own lives into picture-perfect feeds for validation of an online audience.
“I feel like I needed to have a flat stomach, or look a certain way,” said Kaitlyn Valenzuela, a second-year at SRJC. “Especially when I was younger, I didn’t wear what I wanted because I didn’t look like the girls I had seen online.”
For Juliana Green, a first-year natural science major, TikTok’s influence on women goes beyond aesthetics and trends. She explained that the underlying messages in these trending videos often linger and affect how women view themselves.
“There’s a weird culture, even if you don’t follow the toxic stuff, it still shows up — like how to lose weight fast, or what you should and shouldn’t eat,” Green said.
That culture can erode confidence and push women toward harmful habits. What begins as just a casual scroll for entertainment turns into a silent comparison and, for some, internalized shame of who they are and what they look like.
Marina Lee, a second-year art major, shared how social media impacts her self-perception and behavior in public spaces. She explained that TikTok’s influence makes her hyper-aware of her looks, actions and how others perceive her.
“It makes me more aware of what I look like and how I behave in public. More specifically, how other people perceive me,” Lee said.
Alexis Pulos, an SRJC media studies instructor, said that self-awareness among students is growing, but breaking away from social media platforms is more difficult than it seems. He described the struggle using the term “cognitive dissonance,” a psychological concept that explains the tension people feel when their beliefs conflict with their behaviors.
“We know this is problematic, and yet we don’t necessarily stop or change our online habits,” Pulos said. “That is a form of cognitive dissonance.”
Pulos explained that TikTok’s structure is uniquely powerful with its fast-paced algorithms and intimate storytelling style to create an illusion of authenticity and relatability, even when the content is edited or subtly sponsored.
“It’s a whole process to generate revenue,” Pulos said. “It’s a capitalist system, like I am the product and it’s extracting something from me, whether it’s data, time or money.”
Some students attempt to take breaks from social media to escape the addictive scroll, while others choose to delete the apps entirely.
“I was constantly reaching for my phone and going to TikTok; it was scary, and I didn’t realize how often I was looking for that dopamine hit,” Valenzuela said about her two-week failed TikTok detox.
Favela expressed that same feeling of dependence, but over time, she has learned to be more intentional with how she engages with the content and how she overcomes its effects.
“It’s best to be your own person, build your image, be confident in who you are, accentuate those good points of yourself and don’t focus on the stuff that you don’t have,” Favela said.
