Social Media and Body Image: A Toxic Relationship?

Trigger Warning: This story contains mentions of eating disorders, disordered eating, and body image.

In 2009, supermodel Kate Moss was credited with popularising the phrase “nothing tastes as good as skinny feels,”.

The statement went on to be championed by the pro-anorexia community online and received significant backlash.

By 2018, the model expressed regret for the infamous motto, but Moss’s viral statement was just the beginning of negative messaging spread on social media.

Nowadays social media users are exposed to damaging trends, unqualified health advice, and edited or filtered posts promoting unattainable beauty ideals all within a few swipes.

Research shows social media use is associated with negative body image, increased body dissatisfaction, and eating disorders.

HOW IS SOCIAL MEDIA HURTING USERS?

Caption: Young girls often compare themselves with celebrities and influencers like Kendall Jenner online (Photo Credit: Eliza Marlow).

Awareness of the negative impact of social media on body image has grown rapidly in the last decade.

Dr Veya Seekis from Griffith University’s School of Psychology says specific appearance focused content is closely linked with negative body image in women and young girls, and increasingly in males too.

This impact holds regardless of whether a person is simply viewing harmful content or actively interacting with it.

“Negative body image can have such a grip on people’s day-to-day lives.

“You hear lots of terrible stories from girls and your heart breaks because it’s such a lifelong thing that they take with them and it takes such a long time to break the chains of negative body image and I just don’t think people actually understand how intense the feelings are for people,” Dr Seekis said.

RESPONSIBILITY OF SOCIAL MEDIA SITES

Accredited dietitian and eating disorder clinician Alex Rodriguez from River Oak Health says social media can be a useful space for advice, but loose posting restrictions mean a wide range of influencers can post nutrition or exercise related advice without qualifications.

Popular ‘What I Eat in a Day’ videos are a common example of highly accessible but potentially misguided and ill-informed social media content available for consumption.

Mr Rodriguez says the design of social media platforms’ algorithms is highly concerning because it can cause significant disruption to people’s treatment and can reinforce their eating concerns.

“There’s some new research that’s come out showing that people who experience eating disorders and or some form of disordered eating and body image concerns are far more likely to be shown pro-eating disorder or pro-dieting or pro-body checking and body image ideal related content," he said.

Dr Seekis says social media platforms are capable of altering the algorithm to steer people away from negative body image related content and redirect users to more beneficial material.

“We have evidence to suggest that viewing self-compassion, viewing body neutrality, even viewing some body positivity content online is really helpful."

Dr Seekis says it’s difficult to ask social media users, particularly young people, to avoid or disengage with negative body image content.

“You get trapped because the algorithm is designed to trap us."

Dr Seekis says money remains the major barrier to change.

“Negative content tends to bring with it more views, more views brings more advertising."

Social media notoriously transcends governmental boundaries, meaning corporations hold the real power to affect change.

“This is probably a fairly big job, but I also think they have the responsibility to do it, they’ve opened the Pandora’s Box so they’ve got to put some things out there that can be antidotes to the kinds of content that they’re releasing,” Dr Seekis said.

NEW MOVEMENT SET TO CHANGE THE LANDSCAPE

Caption: Social media users often face a barrage of toxic trends online (Photo Credit: Eliza Marlow).

While body positivity has made its mark online and in popular culture, a new movement is challenging its core message.

Body neutrality has emerged as an alternative and it’s designed to take the focus away from appearance, recognising that unconditional love for our bodies can be “unrealistic” and “unachievable”.

Dr Seekis says body neutrality recognises people don’t need to judge their body either positively or negatively as our feelings towards our bodies are constantly changing.

“Body neutrality shifts its focus towards appreciating the functionality of our bodies, fostering a sense of respect and care for our physical selves, it encourages us to recognise that our innate qualities and external interests play a significant role in shaping our self-worth, and all of those things ultimately help to diminish this excessive focus on our appearance,” she said.

EARLY INTERVENTION

Negative body image is more prevalent in young people than other groups, with over 90% of adolescents reporting body image concerns.

Empowering children and early adolescents with the tools to respond to these messages is the goal of the ‘Embrace Kids’ program co-developed by body image activist and Australian of the Year, Taryn Brumfitt.

Dr Seekis is a contributor to the program which is currently being piloted with school students from grades 5 to 8 in Queensland and South Australia.

The five-lesson program focuses on the functionality of people’s bodies and the use of self-compassion as an emotional regulation strategy to help reduce feelings of negativity towards the body.

Dr Seekis says the program concentrates on teaching children how to navigate and approach social media.

“It is really just about preparing them, helping build some resilience, and helping them understand to be compassionate to others,” she said.

But Dr Seekis says the reality of delivering this kind of content is not as easy as it sounds.

“It is really tough, we need to get schools on board, we need to get teachers prepared and wanting to actually deliver this kind of content."

IS SOCIAL MEDIA ALWAYS THE ENEMY?

While social media is often condemned for popularising negative perceptions of body image, it can help people too.

Dr Jessica Lee from Griffith University’s School of Public Health says previous research she's been involved with shows social media can be a tool to combat the loneliness people feel when recovering from eating disorders.

“There were so many other complexities they were dealing with that weren’t being addressed by the health networks that they were involved in who were just concerned about calories and weight.

“Being able to identify with people online was actually a really important network to be a part of,” she said.

Research by Dr Seekis and colleagues that saw girls with negative body image use Facebook as a communication tool to talk to each other in the context of self-compassion also found clinically significant improvement in rates of body dissatisfaction and drive for thinness.

Dr Seekis says the study shows social media is capable of being a useful instrument to fight negative body image.

“There is good out there, we just need to be able to put it into the right hands and that’s the hard part,” she said.

HOPE FOR THE FUTURE

In September, a parliamentary meeting was convened by Independent MP Zoe Daniel to "discuss rising body image dissatisfaction among young people".

The meeting brought together representatives of Meta – Facebook and Instagram’s parent company – along with Australia’s e-Safety Commissioner, the Assistant Minister for Mental Health and Suicide Prevention, Emma McBride, and people with eating disorders to discuss their experiences.

TikTok representatives were not present at the meeting.

The parties involved agreed to form a working group which will have six months to develop recommendations for the government on how to reduce the harm from social media on young people in relation to eating disorders.

Ms Daniel also confirmed the group will be lobbying for a federal inquiry into body image.