“It makes me happy to play volleyball, because it gives me a team that I know supports me and we learn how to keep going even when it’s hard and how to stick together as a team. I’m confident in my ability and I know I can do well on the volleyball court, so it makes me a more confident person. My confidence has gone up since I started playing volleyball. I feel like everyone has equal importance on the team, so like you are part of something that is bigger than yourself, ‘cause everyone is just equal and you want everybody to succeed,” Soph. Elizabeth Watkin said.
A recently published article about the confidence of girls in 2024 announced that the confidence went rapidly down and girls made themselves mentally smaller and didn’t speak up, for example about their great achievements. The problems addressed in the article published by Huffpost Personal, by Lisa Hinkelman, are actually true for West Ottawa students, despite Watkins’ great experience with sports at West Ottawa and the ability of West Ottawa students to build their confidence through school activities like sports and clubs.
“Since 2017, the percentage of girls reporting confidence has declined from 68% to 55%,” is what the article by Hinkelman wrote. The school counselors of West Ottawa and the school psychologists saw something familiar happen, but not just at WO.
“I mean, I think it is overall more like community and globally, we see a drop off of girls’ confidence, not just in high school. Usually once girls hit puberty they start to do peer comparison and in general that belief in and drive start to fade away a little bit. I think a lot of it is socially constructed, I think also some of it has to do with hormones playing a role, but honestly I didn’t notice a huge amount of that at West Ottawa, but in general we see this a lot across the board,” Counselor Danielle Barnes said.
“I think sometimes I see more a lack of willingness to take a risk. So I think this is related to a lack of confidence. Students want to make sure they take classes for example, in things they are going to do really well in. They don’t necessarily push to that next step. So I would say, in girls, I kind of feel it in both, but I do see it in girls,” Counselor Sara Schultz said.
As the quotes from the counselors showed so far, there has been a decline in confidence or a rise in anxiety at West Ottawa. “I do think there is certainly a rise in anxieties that then trickle down into a lack of confidence in girls or in young women, I think around pressures to be perfect, pressures to look a certain way, pressures to be at events or get invited or be included, because they can see other people through Social Media, doing things they may or may not be at,” Counselor Lacy Otteman said.
“My most recent research study, which included more than 17,000 fifth-grade through 12th-grade girls in The Girls’ Index, reveals a troubling tend: 67% of the participants reported they don’t say what they’re thinking or disagree with others because they want to be liked,” from Hinkelman, showed that girls didn’t believe in their abilities and didn’t speak up or share their thoughts.
“I would agree with this. Athletes that are more driven, in general students that are more driven in their athletics or in their extracurricular activities, I think a lot of times girls are a little bit more hesitant to promote themselves and really like be proud and talk about those achievements with others and fear that they might be seen as vein or just overly into themselves. And this is really sad, because achievements are getting brushed under the rug and don’t get celebrated the way they should. So yeah, I would say I see a lot more of that than the lack of drive in confidence. I think it’s more like again, just an attempt to make themself small and not really try to get as much attention on themselves,” Barnes said.
“I see that in some girls, could I say that that is more often, I don’t know if it is more often. I think it depends on the person. But I do believe that they’re definitely some who are unwilling to speak up or need help in order to get their voice heard,” Schultz said.
“I don’t know that I could say that there is that widespread issue, I don’t know enough about it in classrooms, right, because I’m not in the classrooms, but I have worked with students, one on one about finding their voice in class. I have even talked to students about, ‘Let’s track how many times have you prevent yourself from raising your hand in class, when you knew the answer or wanted to speak up, but chose not to.’And I would let them just track it. And then initiated a challenge, trying to keep them from making themself small. ‘Okay so you said for example, There were five times when you wanted to raise your hand but you didn’t. Next time in class, how many times can you raise your hand and participate or share your opinion’,” Otteman said.
Social Media plays a big role in this decline of confidence, like a lot of things it has a positive side, but also a negative one. “Our data shows that 95% of fifth-grade and six-grade girls use social media, with 41% spending over six hours a day scrolling through their feeds. That’s six hours of constant comparison. Six hours of curated ‘perfection’. Six hours of potential self-doubt,” provides Hinkelman’s article.
“The influence of Social media is so important on kids world wide, teens, preteens, all of that and girls are constantly comparing themselves to unrealistic standards that are presented on Social Media like instagram, and what we really see on instagram are like the highlight reels, we don’t see the reality and the situation unfortunately like, with the present ability to filter, you know, change bodies and change makeup and all the different things you can do with all the ridiculously incredible technology we have these days. It is making it really hard for girls to just accept themselves and be okay with who they are and be proud of who they are. So, it is really sad and it is negatively impacting the confidence, wellbeing and mental health of girls worldwide. I think this is a bold statement to say, but I think this is accurate. But I also think that it affects men and boys, but just the standard for girls and women in our society has been unrealistic for so long, that I just think the pressure that women have to look a certain way be a certain way, felt just a lot heavier on the shoulders of our girls today,” Barnes said.
“Oh my goodness, how many stories. Yes, Social Media has a huge impact. I would say Snapchat is one of the big ones, where people, girls especially, will post things or things get posted of them they did not intend to get posted and it is hugely negative. But I’m a firm believer that Social Media is a negative thing, just because it is, it makes our world a little too small sometimes when you know what everybody else is doing, what everybody else thinks, you know, it also gives people the ability to say things they wouldn’t be able to say to your face, because they are just looking at a screen. So they don’t always think about what they post and how other people are impacted and yeah, I could go on and on about the way Social Media, especially with girls, has affected their confidence, has affected how they see themselves and how they feel other people see them,” Schultz said.
“Social Media sort of becomes all consuming, because people post and they are posting where they are, what they are doing, what they have, who they’re with and it can be isolating for somebody on that other side of the screen, if they’re not included, don’t have those things, haven’t had that experience, where ever that case might be. You see a real desire to keep up with whatever other things people are doing on Social Media, in addition to people sometimes not being kind to one another via Social media apps,” Otteman said.
“I remember the sideways glances, the whispers, the constant feeling of not fitting in- not with the girls, not with the boys, not even in my own skin,” Hinkelman tells from her personal experience.
“There are definitely some students at WO who struggle with loneliness and feeling like they just don’t belong. We do have, one of the great things about West Ottawa, is we have so many different programs, clubs and sports and activities that kids can get involved in, but sometimes there is barriers for students to get involved in those things, whether they have to be home to watch their siblings at a certain time of the day or maybe they don’t have access to transportation to get home from school after the three o’clock bus. So there are still barriers for kids getting involved in those things to help increase their sense of belonging here in the community,” Barnes said.
“I would say mostly with students who are Freshmen and students that are new to WO. So for those who moved from another school, it’s hard for them to feel connected. We can always recommend clubs and groups and things like that, but you also need to be brave and have those risk taking skills, and if you are new and struggling like that it makes it really difficult to find ways to meet other people, even tho there are so many people here, you can still feel alone. And I see that a lot in students. Especially at lunchtime, that’s one of the biggest stressors where people aren’t willing to sit down next to other people they don’t know, because they don’t know what the reaction might be, so it’s a huge, I think a big thing for some of our students,” Schultz said.
“I think Social media has an opportunity to bring people together, have shared ideas, thoughts, ways to make community, but there are also opportunities to then leave people out of it, they become excluded. I have seen this on Social Media, but more often in a group chat, where people were left out of a group chat. Group message through DM’s and either they are talking about that person or they just left them out of the conversation,” Otteman said.
As this comparison between the two articles show, there is for sure struggles with loneliness, fitting in and coping with new people and making friends, but also with speaking up on their own behalf and presenting themselves. There is nothing wrong with talking about your great achievements, they deserve a celebration and you can speak up, whenever you want, please don’t hide and don’t be afraid to speak up, your opinion and your feelings are valid and matter.
