Social Media's Role in Promoting Eating Disorders: A Critical Analysis

This essay examines the significant role of social media in promoting body dissatisfaction and eating disorders, particularly among young and middle-aged women. It highlights how idealized and often edited images on social media distort reality, leading to conditions like bulimia and anorexia, especially in adolescents with weaker familial bonds. The essay discusses the impact of unrealistic body image standards, the pressure to achieve unattainable body goals through methods like starvation, and the influence of family preferences for slimness. It explores how social media platforms facilitate bullying and compares the average body weight of models to the average American woman, contributing to mental health issues. The conclusion emphasizes the need for awareness and critical thinking to avoid being negatively influenced by social media's promotion of thin bodies. It also suggests regular exercise as a healthier alternative to restrictive diets.

Running head: Social Media and Eating Disorder
SOCIAL MEDIA AND EATING DISORDER

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Social Media and Eating Disorder
Abstract
Social media played a prominent role in promoting body dissatisfaction within a
population. Mainly young and middle aged women get affected through this and suffer from
eating disorders. Images portrayed on social media generally distort reality and adolescents
with weaker guardian bonds get affected and suffer from disorders such as bulimia. In Social
media ideal body image is portrayed which is usually edited and the young generation
conducts starvation for obtaining the unreachable body eight goals. On the other hand,
families also influence this as they prefer their child to be slim and attractive, which promotes
eating disorders.

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Social Media and Eating Disorder
Table of Contents
Introduction................................................................................................................................4
Social media and eating disorder...............................................................................................4
Conclusion..................................................................................................................................6

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Social Media and Eating Disorder
Introduction
Social media (SM) is playing a key role in promoting ideal body image in current
time because people are connected closely with the internet and consuming everything on it.
Social media is also shaping eating behavior of its consumers. Different researchers have
found that there is a strong connection between social media use and eating concerns. In the
USA disordered eating has impacted around 25 million people who are suffering from
anorexia and bulimia. Moreover, the impression of society has also made a prominent
influence on the nation's obsession towards slenderness and dieting. This essay describes the
influence of SM on people’s nutritional habits.
Social media and eating disorder
People nowadays use SM for long hours and they get influenced by the contents of
social media platforms. According to Derenne & Beresin (2006), it has been found that SM
affects the women the most regarding body image. Most of the women get influenced by
photos shared through SM which contains skinny models, actors and common people. Most
of the people use editing apps to look beautiful and skinny. This aspect can be considered as a
main cause of the increasing rate of eating disorders among women of the Society.
Americans are obsessed with diets and wellbeing. Models of TV shows, advertisements and
fashion business are influencing American women to focus on looking sexy by losing body
weight. However, Chakraborty & Basu (2010) have stated that most of the young girls do not
know about the appropriate diet required to be followed for being healthy and thin. Due to
this reason, they are reducing the amount of food consumption and suffering from different
eating disorders. For example, bulimia and anorexia are two common disorders that are
common among women. As stated by Ambrose & Deisler (2010), SM is promoting that being
thin is the appropriate type of body a woman must have. This fact is causing stress in women
who are fat and they are trying to be slim by sacrificing food.

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At present, most of the people are concerned about what others think about them. For
example, others’ opinion on their body shape has become very important for most of the
young girls. As mentioned by Sidani, Shensa, Hoffman, Hanmer & Primack (2016), this fact
is creating mental pressure on people. For example, Caroline Reston, a young girl, died in
2006 at the age of 21. It has been found that she was living on apple and tomato juices for a
long period to get the perfect body shape of a supermodel. This behavior has taken her life
and has taught a lesson to the world to not to follow this trend. As stated by Griffiths,
Murray, Krug & McLean (2018), it has become a trend to follow celebrities and their
lifestyles through following their social media profiles. It has been found that approximately
14-26% of athletes who are associated with cheerleading, figure skating and vaulting often
suffer from stress regarding their physical appearance. Models, actors and athletes follow
special diets and they exercise a lot to stay fit and thin. However, they do not share secrets of
their diet on SMs. As a result, their followers get influenced by their appearance and select
the wrong way to be slim. It led them to suffer from several eating disorders including
bulimia and anorexia.
Apart from media, family has also a direct influence on the dietary problems of young
members. Over the years, guardians prefer their child to be slim and attractive and they urge
their children to maintain the body shape (Wang, Brede, Ianni & Mentzakis, 2017).
Moreover, it can be seen that guardians suffering from obesity want their child to maintain
weight. This increases pressures on adolescents and influences them to conduct unhealthy
dietary practices. SM use is just a single contributing factor to dietary issues. Guardians can
play a critical role in saving their child from undesirable body image. It was found in an
Israeli research that guardians of girls who recognized online activities of their child have
lower risks of dietary issues. Involvement of guardians is necessary to make the teens

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Social Media and Eating Disorder
understand the reality and requirement of proper nutrition for their normal mental and
physical growth.
The images seen on social media distort reality that has bad impacts on adolescents
(McLean, Wertheim, Masters & Paxton, 2017). The average body weight of a model in the
fashion industry is about 120 pounds while the average american woman weighs 169 pounds,
according to a report of the national center for health statistics. This leads in creating a fake
belief among young consumers of social media that they are overweight while in reality they
are average. This gives rise to mental health issues in relation with body image. As opined by
Grogan (2016), health conditions caused due to portrayals in SM includes anxiety,
depression, anorexia and bulimia.
On the other hand, the SM platforms have made facilitated bullying and infiltration in
the daily life of a person. Recent studies reveal that around 65% of people stated that social
bullying has negatively influenced their eating disorders. According to the National Institute
of Mental Health, “approximately 3% of the U.S. teens are impacted by disorders of eating.
However, the majority of them do not get remedies for these disorders. The obsession over
self-image, matching peers and fulfilling expectations of the society in the SM world has also
opened the door for body shamers (Fortesa & Ajete, 2014). This has facilitated bullying to
occur more frequently. It is essential for adolescents to take proper diet and nutrition for their
healthy growth. If they are serious about diet and losing weight, the right path can be shown
by a medical professional.
Conclusion
From the entire discussion of this essay, it can be concluded that SM is playing an
important role in influencing people to be slim. However, most of the young women are
sacrificing their daily meal to look slim and attractive, which is causing them to suffer from
eating disorders. It is the responsibility of both people and their parents to stay away from

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being influenced by the promotion of thin bodies as ideal by SMs. staying thin is good, but
individuals must take appropriate initiative that can secure wellbeing as well. Instead of
leaving nutrition, people may consider regular exercise as an appropriate way of losing
weight.

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Reference list
Ambrose, M., &Deisler, V. (2010). Investigating Eating Disorders (anorexia, Bulimia, and
Binge Eating): Real Facts for Real Lives. Enslow Publishing, LLC.
Chakraborty, K., &Basu, D. (2010). Management of anorexia and bulimia nervosa: An
evidence-based review. Indian journal of psychiatry, 52(2), 174.
Derenne, J. L., &Beresin, E. V. (2006).Body image, media, and eating disorders. Academic
psychiatry, 30(3), 257-261.
Fortesa, K., &Ajete, K. (2014).Family Influence on Disordered Eating Behaviour. Procedia-
Social and Behavioral Sciences, 159, 314-318.
Griffiths, S., Murray, S. B., Krug, I., & McLean, S. A. (2018). The contribution of social
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Grogan, S. (2016). Body image: Understanding body dissatisfaction in men, women and
children. Routledge.
McLean, S. A., Wertheim, E. H., Masters, J., & Paxton, S. J. (2017). A pilot evaluation of a
social media literacy intervention to reduce risk factors for eating disorders.
International Journal of Eating Disorders, 50(7), 847-851. Retrieved from:
http://vuir.vu.edu.au/33112/1/Manuscript_Pilot%20evaluation%20of%20social
%20media%20intervention_R2.pdf
Sidani, J. E., Shensa, A., Hoffman, B., Hanmer, J., & Primack, B. A. (2016). The association
between social media use and eating concerns among US young adults. Journal of the
Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, 116(9), 1465-1472. Retrieved from:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5003636/

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Wang, T., Brede, M., Ianni, A., & Mentzakis, E. (2017, February). Detecting and
characterizing eating-disorder communities on social media. In Proceedings of the
Tenth ACM International Conference on Web Search and Data Mining (pp. 91-100).
Retrieved from: https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/3018661.3018706