Body Image and Online Use

Contributor: Leigh Bell, BA, writer for Eating Disorder Hope

The notorious thigh-gap hashtag, prompting females to post pictures on social media of their legs and the space in between, was soon outdone by the bellybutton challenge. This online shootout saw ‘How small is your waist compared to mine?’

Females, and men too, unfortunately have long compared themselves others — to friends, schoolmates, co-workers, etc. — but it was only recently we can compare ourselves to the more than 1.35 billion people on Facebook today¹. That’s about equal to the population of China, and if we look at the Internet users globally, about every other person on the planet is on Facebook².

Social Media Shows Us a “Perfect” Life

This doesn’t include those on Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, SnapChat — the list goes on. And do we think pictures and posts people put on Facebook depict their true lives? How often do you see a selfie of someone who just woke up? Almost never. But a selfie of someone coiffed and cropped for a night on the town? Almost every time you log on.

One-quarter of teens go online “almost constantly,” thanks to the widespread availability of smartphones, according to the Pew Research Center report “Teens, Social Media & Technology Overview 2015.”³ Nearly three-quarters of teens have access to a smartphone, helping 92% of them to go online daily. More than 70% of teens, kids ages 13 to 17, are on Facebook and half of them are on Instagram, according to the report.

Girls predominantly use social media, while boys are far more likely to play video games.

Young Adults’ Attachment to Eating Disorders

Young adults, age 18-24, are almost equally attached to their phones and social media. Around 90% check their phones within the first 15 minutes of waking up, according “Always Connected,” an IDC research report supported by Facebook. The same age group spends about half the day on social media of some type.

This is disturbing because no single population is linked into social media more than teenagers and young adults, who normally struggle most with body image and are also at greatest risk to develop an eating disorder. This vulnerable population is perhaps most swayed by images and messages in social media.

Is Social Media Partially to Blame for Eating Disorders?

Facebook, Twitter, and other networking websites — and the selfies people post on them — are partly to blame for an alarming and sudden rise in eating disorders among teenage girls in the United Kingdom, experts say⁴. Hospital admissions for eating disorders doubled in three years, rising from 915 in 2011 to 1,815 in 2014.

Young people are feeling pressure from the more than 10,000 images of “perfect-looking people” they have right at their fingertips, the article said.

More than 95% of teen girls have access to the Internet at home, and while the Net provides many educational advantages, the time girls spent surfing it was significantly related to “internalization of the thin ideal, boy surveillance, and drive for thinness,” found a recent study of almost 1,100 girls age 13 to 15⁵. The girls who used Facebook (75%) scored significantly higher on all body-image-concern measures than those who weren’t on Facebook.

The Even More Dangerous Communities

While Facebook is meant to make people feel more connected, the online juggernaut often leaves people feeling inadequate, lonely, and angry. Users compare their lives to those portrayed by their “friends” and feel like they simply don’t size up⁶. Go beyond general usage of social media to more threatening purposes, like many girls and women who search or stumble upon — which research shows isn’t uncommon — pro-anorexia sites like thinspiration, thinspo, ana bootcamp, and others⁷.

Many of these females are searching for weight-tips or simply following images their friends “liked,” only to find sexually suggestive images with a focus on “ultra-thin, bony, scantily clad women,” the same research reports. Such images could affect the body image, quality of life, and mental health of those who see them.

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About the Author:

Leigh Bell holds a Bachelor of Arts in English with minors in Creative Writing and French from Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. She is a published author, journalist with 15 years of experience, and a recipient of the Rosalynn Carter Fellowship for Mental Health Journalism. Leigh is recovered from a near-fatal, decade-long battle with anorexia and the mother of three young, rambunctious children.

Community Discussion – Share your thoughts here!

What affect has your online usage had on your body image? What steps can we take to turn this around and bring awareness to positive body image sites?

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References:

1. Facebook Investor Relations. (2014, October 28). Retrieved June 16, 2015.
2. Dewey, C. (2014, October 29). Almost as many people use Facebook as live in the entire country of China. Retrieved June 16, 2015.
3. Teens, Social Media & Technology Overview 2015. (2015, April 8). Retrieved June 16, 2015.
4. Borland, S. (2015, June 3). Selfie anorexics: Alert over teen girls’ eating disorders fueled by social media . Retrieved June 16, 2015.
5. Tiggemann, M. and Slater, A. (2013), NetGirls: The Internet, Facebook, and body image concern in adolescent girls. International Journal of Eating Disorders, 46, 630–633.
6. Sifferlin, A. (2013, January 23). Why Facebook Makes You Feel Bad About Yourself | TIME.com. Retrieved June 16, 2015.
7. Ghaznavi, J., Taylor, L. (2015) Bones, body parts, and sex appeal: An analysis of #thinspiration images on popular social media. Body Image, 14, 54-61.

Last Updated & Reviewed By: Jacquelyn Ekern, MS, LPC on July 1st, 2015
Published on EatingDisorderHope.com