Sierra: Social comparison is looking at yourself and determining how you measure up to other people. With social comparison, I guess, it's like the average girl wanting to look like the other girl on TV or be as pretty as the other girl on TV. So you use that aspect to kind of judge your own body image. You think, oh, well, I don't have this quality or that quality. So I use that whole social comparison to, oh, well, if she's got that, and I don't have that, then that's what I want. Because that's what everybody else wants.

Iris: I came here. Obviously, it was another step from high school, so I felt very intimidated. But there are so many people, so many other talented people. I was always comparing myself to other people, like, oh, they're smart. They're busy. They have a job. They have so many other things to do. I guess that pushed me to be more outgoing, and join clubs, and be part of the community or stuff like that. And that's helped me a lot.

Daniel: I would say my feelings have been informed by social comparison in football. I played next to this kid who was like my good friend. We play the exact same position, so he had more of the look as far as like college levels. He was just a little bit taller, longer, bigger, a little faster. Coaches and colleges were kind of more so looking at him, giving him more attention. I wasn't really receiving that. We had the same numbers and everything, but he had more of the look. It just made me feel bad.

Andrea: Social comparison did play a major role in my high school life. There was this girl that me and her practically the same, except there was just this one little tiny part where she was better at makeup than I was. And I was just coming into it trying to just like play around with it more, and so there would be times where I would be shuffling like 10 minutes just trying to put on a simple eyeliner trick. And I'm looking over at her, and she's putting on all of this stuff that I practically don't even know what it is.

Daniel: That same guy, when we would be at like parties, he had like kind of that social anxiety. I was a social butterfly. Once I kind of saw that side of him, it kind of made me feel as a person like, well, maybe he's really good at this. But I'm really good at this. That made me feel kind of better about myself, because I was like, well, you know, everyone has their strengths and weaknesses. So those are his. There are mine.

Sierra: Social media has a big imprint on social comparison, because people see other people being happy. And they feel like they don't have that in their own lives, or they see the hottest couple together. And so they want to be that couple. So that's what they strive to be instead of being happy and content with themselves, or being happy with the person that they have. They're looking for the next best thing to make them as much in the spotlight as other people.