Written by: Evangeline Halim
Edited by: Maggie Huang
With new and growing forms of social media such as TikTok, Twitch, and YouTube Shorts, many of today’s children are exposed to hidden influences in online content. These subtle encouragements may lead to an increase in mental illness, more specifically, eating disorders. Why does this happen? This is mainly due to the popular suggestion that looking a certain way can make one happier and more likable. This can harm younger audiences since they are susceptible to the impact it might have on their self-image. There is evidence from teenagers who struggle with mental health, saying that Instagram can make it worse (Grizzle, 2022).
These eating disorders that result from social media can range from a variety of types, two of the more commonly known ones being anorexia and bulimia nervosa. In detail, anorexia nervosa is when an individual does not like their appearance and often restricts themselves to primarily eating vegetables, fruit, and diet products, or skipping meals overall. This is often comorbid with bulimia nervosa, where individuals often binge eat and purge afterward to maintain a certain body weight. (Harrington et al., 2015). The concern of eating disorders lies within the influence of social media, and whether disorders such as anorexia nervosa will spread to those with higher exposure to online content.
The answer to this concern stands as expected- Many young individuals, particularly females, report higher levels of influence from social media (negatively impacting their perceptions of their body shape). As evidenced by a peer-reviewed study, adolescent girls’ body dissatisfaction was highly correlated with engaging in Facebook content related to appearances (Scully et al., 2020). Moreover, there’s a positive relationship between the use of social media and eating disorders, with higher use comes higher exposure to beauty references with which to compare oneself (Padín et al., 2021). It’s important to note that these aspects serve as evidence that social media can increase the likelihood of an eating disorder developing. Additionally in 2020, the Dove Self-Esteem Project found that 80% of teenage girls stated that they had downloaded a filter (a photo-editing tool) or used an app to alter their photos by the age of 13 years old (Grizzle, 2022). Overall, these online beauty standards have undoubtedly made a negative impact on these young adolescents’ lives.
Social media can be tricky to deal with, since we may never know what is “real” or “fake” in pictures. Younger audiences can have even greater trouble distinguishing reality from edited photos since most of these images are known to be edited, cropped, and filtered in some form (Scully et al., 2020). While keeping this in mind, we can spread awareness of this issue step-by-step. By educating more about eating disorders and the negative influences of social media, we can make these viewers less vulnerable to damaging their bodies for the sake of beauty standards. It will also help others to know that mental health can spread to our physical state, which is highly dangerous since it may lead to death. Hopefully, we can then open the minds of adolescents and allow them to acknowledge that social media is not an end-all-be-all for social standards.
References:
Grizzle, S. (2022, August 2). Effects of Social Media on Teens: Understanding the Headlines. Boys & Girls Clubs of America. https://bgca.org/news-stories/2022/August/effects-of-social-media-on-teens-understanding-recent-headlines?gad_source=1&gclid=Cj0KCQiA35urBhDCARIsAOU7QwlDEfwzBnsNe9crT6QfcM8M56okxcJjxE2y1RDZDPQ1xxE-M3K1OGMaAjgnEALw_wcB
Harrington, B. C., Jimerson, M., Haxton, C., & Jimerson, D. C. (2015, January 1). Initial Evaluation, Diagnosis, and Treatment of Anorexia Nervosa and Bulimia Nervosa. AAFP. https://www.aafp.org/pubs/afp/issues/2015/0101/p46.html
Padín, P. F., González-Rodríguez, R., Verde-Diego, C., & Vázquez-Pérez, R. (2021, August 24). Social media and eating disorder psychopathology: A systematic review. Cyberpsychology: Journal of Psychosocial Research on Cyberspace, 15(3). https://doi.org/10.5817/cp2021-3-6
Scully, M., Swords, L., & Nixon, E. (2020, September 11). Social comparisons on social media: online appearance-related activity and body dissatisfaction in adolescent girls. Irish Journal of Psychological Medicine. https://doi.org/10.1017/ipm.2020.93
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