Social Media And Eating Disorders

Magazines are similarly another category of media that can take great responsibility for the development of eating disorders. Magazines have been around for hundreds of years and were, at one time, the main source of entertainment for most women. The covers of many magazines feature exceptionally thin females, and average women who look at these visual images become disheartened because they want to be just as slim and beautiful. Although men do not read magazines as much as women do, the images of physically fit men in certain male magazines, such as GQ, can have the same effect. In this manner, magazines have the ability to influence disordered eating. There is a plethora of research that supports the idea that magazines have this negative …show more content…
There is a saying that goes, “Don’t believe everything you see on the Internet,” but countless people are pulled in by the Internet and succumb to its false ideas concerning beauty and perfection. Many social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram can be subject to discrimination and can alter a person’s self-confidence depending on the type of response received on these networks. Numerous men and women are victims of unrealistic messages that are conveyed through the Internet, or on social media, everyday and these people are more likely to become insecure in the way they look and …show more content…
Researchers conducted a cross-sectional survey in which a group of women completed self-reported surveys concerning Facebook use and disordered eating, and another group of women were assigned to either use Facebook or another Internet site for 20 minutes. It was found that more frequent Facebook use was associated with greater disordered eating and higher maintenance of weight/shape concerns and state anxiety compared to other Internet activity (Mabe, 2014). The number of “likes” women receive on a picture of themselves on social media can affect them enough to lead to disordered eating. Social comparisons such as this are extremely prominent when using social media and can have many negative effects on an individual’s self-esteem. A meta-analysis regarding social media’s impact on eating disorders concluded that people seek gratification when using social media. Therefore, when people do not receive the type of attention that they desire, their self-esteem lowers and they lose self-worth because of their thin-ideal internalization, which leads to these people being unhappy with their bodies and developing eating disorders (Perloff,