Social Media and its Effect on Eating Disorders

Although it may be difficult, when ex- anorexics come out about their experiences, it helps anorexics struggling with themselves and social media. Kerry Hooton, aged 19 at the time, told the Daily Mail about her story while being an anorexic. She exclaimed, “’I have never compared myself to celebrities, it has always been the average person and I believe social media has heightened the ability to allow myself and others to do this’” (Waterlow). Hooton described her main cause of anorexia was the photos that she was seeing on her social media feed. In that moment in time, she didn’t see that it would have been easier to unfollow them because she thought it was motivation for her to be that skinny. At the same time an ex- anorexic, Emma Woolf,

As of the year 2013, an estimated 805 million people worldwide suffer from Hunger. This number represents a group of people who suffer from food insecurity. This means they have inadequate access to food and don’t know when their next meal will be. This being said, an estimated 70 million people worldwide suffer from some sort of eating disorders as of 2015 with 30 million being made up of Americans. Eating Disorders can be defined as any eating habit that negatively affects ones overall health. Media has had a large impact on how both males and females see their bodies.

Social media creates an ideal body image in an adolescent’s mind that affects them in various ways. Having an ideal body image can lower self-esteem in some adolescents’ creating eating disorders, and this idea of getting plastic surgery as they get older. Social media is steadily increasing and has heavily influenced adolescent’s to be more aware of their body figure. As a result, many adolescent’s have developed low self-esteem due to the fact that social media continues promoting fit women and creating the idea that women need to be thin to be loved or accepted by society; this can cause harm to adolescent’s because they feel the need to fit in to society.

According to the internet, 10 million American women suffer from eating disorders? Eating disorders are serious illnesses which are caused by irregular eating habits and concerns about body weight. As a result, eating disorders are caused psychological and environmental behavior which can often result in a fatal illness. This is what Kathryn Arnett experiences in her life. She explains how she developed an eating disorder in her essay, “Media and Advertisement: The New Peer Pressure.” The factors that contributed to Arnett’s eating disorder was media idolizing and portraying fake body images, teens developing and having low self-esteem, and parents not being present in their children's’s life.

Eating Disorders affect over ninety percent of our population today. Yearly, they affect around nine million adults alone. Since it has such a widespread grasp it makes eating disorders the most silent killer of all psychological diseases. The psychological distortion behind it though is considered to be one of the most shrouded in mystery compared to other diseases rooted in mental instability.

Eating disorders may not seem like it’s that big of a deal. In America, we hear about a lot about people who contract illnesses such as cancer, but eating disorders isn’t talked about much. Over thirty million people suffer from these mental illnesses, such as anorexia or bulimia. Even though these disorders have the highest life span of any mental illness, they can lead to death due to organ failure, heart failure, starvation, or even go as far as committing suicide. Things such as peer pressure, sports, body image, and low-self esteem can drive teenagers towards eating disorders.

Eating disorders are mental illnesses that affect more than 7 million American women and usually develop in girls ages 12-25. The most common age for a girl to begin having an eating disorder is 17 years old (Discovery Health?). The National Eating Disorders Association states that eating disorders are conditions that arise from factors including physical, psychological, interpersonal, and social issues. Media images help define cultural definitions of beauty and attractiveness and are often acknowledged as one of the factors that contribute to the rise of eating disorders (NEDA). It is evident that the media influences teenage girls to develop eating disorders based on these reasons: the

Poet Allen Ginsberg once said that “whoever controls the media-the images-controls the culture”, and nothing could be truer than this. Media plays a larger role in society within this generation more than many of us are aware of. It can easily impact people’s lives through aspects such as sports, fashion, movies or hobbies, but unfortunately, one of these impacts is how we view our body. Media constantly posts images and messages promoting a nearly unachievable and unrealistic image of what beauty looks like and it almost always has negative fallout when we struggle to meet this. This is known as an eating disorder. An eating disorder is a psychological sickness that results in dangerous eating habits and both short and long term affects on the body. People with eating disorders generally have a negative perception of their self will try to control their weight through unnecessary dieting, exercising or purging. But how does this illness begin? Social media sites, advertising, celebrities and other forms of media through society are all social pressures that are influencing people to be “perfect” and causing this expanding matter.

An eating disorder is an illness that involves an unhealthy feeling about the food we eat. “Eating disorders affect 5-10 millions Americans and 70 million individuals worldwide” (www.eatingdisorderinfo.org 1). They also affect many people from women, men, children, from all ages and different races. People who have eating disorders usually see themselves as being fat when they really aren’t. This usually deals with women or teenage girls mostly. They watch television, movies, read articles in magazines, and see pictures of the celebrities whom they want to be like because they have the “ideal body” that everyone wants and craves for. The media makes us all think we need those types of bodies to be happy with ourselves, be more successful

We live in a society ruled by the media. At every turn we’re bombarded with images of what a girl is supposed to look like, what she’s supposed to wear, and how she’s supposed to act. Models range from stick thin to plus size, with no representation of average size six girls to be found. All around the world, girls are starving themselves to look a certain way, with terms like “thigh gap” and “collarbones” running rampant in their minds. But why? What are those things really worth?

Eating disorders: noun. A group of psychological ailments characterized by intense fear of becoming obese, distorted body image, and prolonged food refusal (anorexia nervosa) and/or binge eating followed by purging through induced vomiting, heavy exercise, or use of laxatives (bulimia nervosa).These ailments are not pretty. In this society, where only the fit and thin bodies are accepted and appreciated, eating disorders are more common than they should be. Children, starting at a young age, see skinny people on television and in magazines. They hear comments on how their bodies look, then hear the same people turn around and make nasty comments on someone else’s figure. This is not okay, because it is teaching young people that anything

In America, the words “beautiful”, “fit”, and “thin” are often used to describe someone that has the ideal “perfect” body, everyone’s perception of it can vary and about half of the population has the body that many people adore or aim to have. However, not everyone has or can achieve the ideal body type, some people will go to extreme measures to either gain or lose weight just to feel accepted in today’s society. These dangerous actions can result in a person developing an eating disorder that can alter their lives both physically and mentally. “An eating disorder is an illness that can be defined as having irregular or abnormal eating habits while being concerned about body weight or shape”

Why are women and men pressured because of an image of skin and bones or walking muscles? Most commercials and magazines flicker photos every second of photoshopped or unrealistic bodies. In addition, Americans on average spend 250 billion hours watching television. More importantly, children and teenagers gape at 20,000 commercials a year. Using unflawed advertisements, they gnaw at children's minds into thinking they aren't beautiful. For example, women are accentuated to live up to the expectations of a Victoria's Secret model--a skinny waist, huge breasts, and meaty thighs. Men, on the other hand, are bombarded with pictures of a projected, heavily built abdomen. In society, people are driven to look like living Barbie dolls. Human beings shouldn't have the weight on their chest to look like the model on an advertisement. Several people can have higher expectations of a person, develop eating disorders, and even lose self-esteem.

Eating disorders are serious disorders that can be life damaging. Eating disorders affect five percent of women and one percent of men in the United States. Reports show that five to ten percent of women who have an eating disorder will die within ten years of having the disease. People need to be taught to be more aware of the dangerous effects of eating disorders.

I think people should not judge based off their looks. I do not think that social media are responsible for the increase in eating disorder because they want people think that you have to look thin if they want to become beautiful or sexy. Social media and magazines are doing a lot of editing to people bodies. I do not think that we can do anything to change the situation because social media have already curse the current generation. Most people already have the mindset that being thin is the way the best way because of what they see on magazines, social media, and models. I wished that people would see that love comes in different shapes and forms and that they should feel comfortable within their own