So, we can shake our heads and grin at some of this, but we know how easy it is to get taken into and get sucked up in what we should and shouldn't look like or what trend we should or shouldn't embrace. Now, come on, how many of us have felt a sense of satisfaction after getting a certain amount of likes or affirmations after posting a selfie or a new profile picture online? Let's be honest about it. Sometimes it's entirely harmless, but it can also be symptomatic of a damaging culture of unrealistic body aspiration, which is becoming harmful.

And it's not just damaging to women. If a man joins a gym, then it's no coincidence that the person will then be targeted with ads on Facebook or Instagram advertising every kind of workout imaginable, often promoting standards of beauty that are just as much a fantasy for many men as the perfect bikini body is to women. Men, particularly young men, are often under similar pressure to look a specific way. A man should have a full head of thick hair, despite the fact that the vast majority of men will experience some form of hair loss during their lifetime, with a large percentage losing their hair before the age of 40. This can have a profoundly destabilising mental effect on men but it is perfectly normal. Men should have perfect abs; a nice tan, but, like women, not too much; a sleeve tattoo, maybe; a beard; as little body hair as possible, or if there is going to be chest hair, trimmed and groomed, just in that specific way that social media allows it to be.

Muscles too—men's obsession with having muscles has become enormous thanks to the growth of social media and reality tv shows. There is a growing and worrying rise of steroid use, particularly in places like south Wales. In fact, one expert last year called the growing rise of steroid use amongst men in Wales a time-bomb for the Welsh NHS, with him projecting that in 20 years' time, maybe less, GPs will see an increase in the number of 40 to 50-year-old men with a history of using steroids with liver, thyroid and kidney problems or heart conditions. 

For years, women and increasingly men have turned to cosmetic procedures, often dangerous, to alter parts of their bodies. Some have now become so routine and an accepted part of our culture that it's not even debated, questioned or an eyebrow raised if a woman pays thousands of pounds for this type of procedure. Now, I understand that it's mostly become normalised and, of course, the vast majority of operations are conducted safely. But let's ask why many people are having these operations in the first instance. Many celebrities have had said operations only to reverse them down the line when they realise that it is damaging for their bodies. The breadth of this problem, encouraged and amplified online, I believe, is difficult to ignore. It has become a pervasive part of our everyday lives, whether we sometimes realise it or not. and even if we do realise what's going on, does it stop us from being influenced by it? 

In 2016, the Dove Global Beauty and Confidence campaign reported that body image and confidence was at a crucially bad stage. More women felt unconfident or disliked their bodies than ever before. It found in the UK that only 20 per cent had self-esteem in the way that they looked. In Austrailia, it was found that a shocking 89 per cent of women admitted to cancelling plans, engagements and even job interviews because of worries about how they looked. Now, this is not an abstract series of statistics. This has very real-world consequences. When people are bombarded by adverts, images, influencers, articles on a daily basis that try to tell them in an explicit or an implicit way that they aren't good enough and that their self-worth will improve if they alter, or work to alter, aspects of their appearance, then it will naturally take a toll on our mental health.

There's also an impact on how some people, specifically younger people and children, react to others. The Nuffield Trust has said that in February 2018, 55 per cent of girls had been bullied about their appearance and although there is an impact that crosses gender lines, it's clear that girls are affected more than boys, with an unprecedented toll on their mental health. Childline reported that 2,000 girls were given body image counselling sessions. That is, sadly, probably only a fraction of what is needed and is why in the past I have campaigned for well-being and confidence lessons in our schools to try and get to grips with some of these real-life problems. 

But it isn't just about the way we look. Our online lives can be markedly different from our realities. Online influencers can encourage people of any age into following patterns or aspiring to things that are sometimes unrealistic. We know as politicians all too well how online influencers can distort. Let's be honest: how many of us have had conversations online with people believing in things or referencing online material that we know is wholly and completely false? I've talked about the rise of fake news here before, and what might be surprising is that most fake news, fake articles and false images are shared by older people. We have a growing crisis, fuelled online, of men joining right-wing groups and chat rooms, where anti-women, racist and violent rhetoric and false news are shared and encouraged. Words like 'cuck' are thrown around to refer to men who they believe do not live up to traditional standards of masculinity. Online influencers reacting against changing gender roles or the loss of traditional roles fuel what we now call 'toxic masculinity'. Online imagery and language and clickbait articles fuel generational battles, with terms such as 'snowflake' and 'gammon' being traded back and forth.

Constant images of a particular kind of ideal lifestyle cause families to fall into debt. We've all seen the Facebook posts of people lining up Christmas presents to show how much they've spent on little Johnny this Christmas and how some people feel pressurised when they see those pictures. Recently, a 14-year-old girl took her own life on Facebook Live, a new low in a worrying trend of how being online can impact us all.

There needs to be a conversation throughout society about the impact of social media on our lives. We should, of course, recognise the positive impacts, the sense of community we can sometimes have in having those political conversations and creating new alliances; we just wouldn't have had them before. But, also it has made us more fractured as a society, more lonely and more disenfranchised in many areas of our lives, especially in relation to mental health. So, how do we do this without preaching to others? Because, of course, we spend a lot of our time online, and I would say to us that we need to try to take ourselves offline more and to have more real interactions. Many of us attended the funeral of Steffan Lewis last week, and what I've said to myself ever since his passing is, 'Do you know what? We have to have those real live interactions. We have to spend more time with the people who we love so that we don't let those memories pass us by in the time that we do have, but allow ourselves to have those positive interactions with people that we will cherish forever, instead of immersing ourselves in these online conversations that will only take us into a very dark place, sometimes, into a negative place that, sometimes, we can't get out of.'

Do we need to introduce more regulation on the internet? That is the perennial question. Do we need to stop people from doctoring images? Do we need to regulate the Facebooks and the Googles of this world? I would say 'yes', because they have a social responsibility. And choice may come into it; we can choose not to go onto the social media platforms, but the adverts do follow us wherever we go. And that's the reality of the lives that we lead.

I want to finish with a poem that I found online, on Pinterest, and I'll try to spend less time online and do the things that I'm preaching today because I want to be true to myself in what I'm saying, but I think this poem is good to finish on.

'i don't want my body to be unblemished / unbroken and crater-free / i want it to be broken in places / to have scars and tiny stories / woven into its tapestry / marks that tell of the way it has stretched / and bent, and cracked open / to let the light of the world / all the way in.../ i don't want to look perfect / i want to look like i've lived.'

So, I think that's a message for us all, and if we can go back to our communities and have these types of discussions with our constituents and with our family members, whether it's online or not, then I hope we will create a more positive and better community online here in Wales.