Dreams Online, Limits Offline: How Young Women Find Freedom in Social Media

At first glance, Asma’s* Instagram tells the story of a young, confident woman leading a glamorous life. There’s a video of her and a friend dancing on a tennis court, dressed in short skirts and tank tops. Another post shows her reclining in the backseat of a car, with the location tagged as Sicily, Italy. But the truth is starkly different. Asma is 24 years old, living under Taliban rule in Afghanistan. She is disabled in both legs, unable to afford proper treatment, and cut off from the outside world.

Online, Asma assumes the identity of another woman she found on Instagram, whose face she uses to create a version of a life she only imagines. In Afghanistan, where women are systematically excluded from public spaces, many choose to adopt entirely different online personas to present a life they dream of but cannot have. 

Asma’s posts tell the story of a life that isn’t hers: morning runs in shorts and a crop top, solo strolls in public, nights out dressed to the nines. For many women, these are simple, everyday pleasures—but for Asma, they represent basic freedoms she does not have.

“She is everything I am not,” Asma said. “When I go on Instagram, I feel like this is me,” 

Mina*, 20, shares a similar story. A quick scroll through her Instagram feed shows a silhouette of a young woman in Paris wearing a backless dress, a dimly lit bar in a big city, and a hand holding a wine glass at dinner. “I love your nails!” someone comments beneath one post. But the nails, like the life she portrays, aren’t hers.

Mina insists her posts are not about deceiving anyone. To her, Instagram is less a window into her life and more a ‘Pinterest board for inspiration.’

“I post what I like; it doesn’t matter what others think,” she told More to Her Story. “What matters is that I feel good. It makes me feel good to see other women having freedom.”

For Asma and Mina, these digital identities are more than escapism; they are acts of quiet rebellion. In a world where even the smallest freedoms have been stripped away, they have found a way to imagine, if not yet live, the lives they so desperately want.

However, the concept of young women creating online personas isn’t unique to Afghanistan. Rothna Begum, co-director of the Waging Justice for Women Initiative at the Clooney Foundation for Justice and former MENA Women’s Rights Researcher at Human Rights Watch, knows the phenomenon well.

“For women and girls who face restrictions by their families, society, and even the authorities, social media is a space to claim agency and express themselves — but it is more than that. Women and girls have reported how social media has exposed what they could have in life, encouraging some to seek more out of life. But it has also negatively impacted those who see what they can’t have and think they can never get it,” she told More to Her Story.

Teenage girls across cultures use image-based platforms like Instagram and TikTok to express themselves. But in recent years, social media, teenage girlhood, and depression have seemed to go hand in hand. A survey by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published in February 2023 found that in 2021, nearly 60% of high school girls in the United States reported experiencing “persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness in the past year,” up from 36% in 2011. According to a recent study of American teens aged 12-15, those who used social media over three hours each day faced twice the risk of developing mental health issues, including depression and anxiety. 

However, in societies where women’s and girls’ basic freedoms are restricted, social media can serve as a much-needed escape from reality. 

“It’s called maladaptive dreaming,” explained 24-year-old Nazanin*, who lives in Iran and sometimes uses social media to share things she can’t do in real life, like show her hair or dance to rap music. “Every girl I know lives another life in her mind because we don’t have freedom in real life. I do it, too, because I feel like somebody took my wings away.”

Eli Somer, the former president of the International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation, coined the term “maladaptive daydreaming” to describe the use of excessive daydreaming as a coping mechanism to avoid reality. While traditionally examined in relation to one’s inner world, its relevance to the digital world remains largely unexplored — yet Mr. Somer sees an overlap.

“Social media can become a complex escape valve for girls and young women living in restrictive societies like Afghanistan and Iran, where it often intertwines with maladaptive daydreaming. In these contexts, social platforms offer more than just connection — they provide virtual spaces where young women can imagine and mentally live out experiences that their societies forbid or limit,” Mr. Somer told More to Her Story. “These women might create idealized online personas or lose themselves in elaborate fantasies about life in more unrestricted environments. Social media content — from casual posts to carefully curated images and videos — can trigger extended daydreaming episodes, especially when showcasing freedoms and lifestyles unavailable in their societies. The result is a complex web of virtual escape that, while understandable, can significantly impact these young women’s mental health and well-being.”

For girls like 23-year-old Sahar* in Afghanistan, social media offers a fleeting escape but cannot fill the void left by a life where she is treated as less than a second-class citizen. “How long can social media distract us from real life?” she asks. “No matter how long we stay online, we always have to go back to real life, which is hell.”

In Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, girls are barred from attending school beyond the sixth grade, and women are banned from most jobs. The United Nations estimates that the group’s ban on girls’ education has left more than 1.4 million girls out of school. In Iran, women and girls face a mandatory dress code and systemic discrimination under the law, limiting their autonomy and basic rights. 

But it’s not just Iran and Afghanistan where women and girls face restrictions on their freedom and self-expression—across 15 countries in the Middle East and North Africa, male guardianship laws govern women’s lives. These laws, often paired with conservative cultural norms, give men authority over many aspects of women’s lives. While this control doesn’t always extend to the digital realm, it can shape a reality where authentic self-expression feels impossible. Social media offers a chance to fill that gap, a space to reclaim what is denied in real life and even create an entirely new one.

“Social media is not just an app; it’s our only link to a world that feels alive, a place where we can be ourselves and express our dreams. We long for the freedom to pursue our dreams openly, but until then, we cling to these online spaces as our lifeline,” said 23-year-old Breshna* in Kabul.

Ms. Begum finds hope in the idea of young women using social media to reimagine what life could look like beyond their societal restrictions. “In my interviews with young women, they have been much more vocal about what they want in life, the challenges they face, and their deep frustrations with family, social, and governmental restrictions on them. From Iran to Egypt to Qatar, girls and young women are not so willing to accept these restrictions, having seen for themselves the lives that they could lead.”

“Social media is my own little dreamscape,” 20-year-old Fariba* in Kabul told More to Her Story. “For that brief moment, I can break free from the restrictions and chains, stepping into a world where I am the main character of my own story—unbound and limitless. In this world, I can taste a freedom so vivid it feels like it’s mine to hold—a freedom that fills my soul, ignites my spirit, and reminds me of everything I’ve been yearning for. It’s a freedom that whispers to me, saying, ‘This is who you are; this is what you deserve. And yes, I know it will pass; I know it will fade. But that taste—that taste alone is enough to keep my dreams alive, to fuel my spirit, and to make me believe that one day, somehow, that freedom could truly be mine.”

 *Names have been changed to protect identities.