The truth is that we all try to put our best life forward when it comes to posting on social media sites.
Rarely, if ever, do we find the truth hiding behind those smiling profile pictures, but recently there have been studies that have shown an increase in eating disorders like anorexia and bulimia correlating to social media.
A quick lesson in the lingo: According to the National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders, or ANAD, an eating disorder is considered a disorder when a person’s relationship with food becomes unhealthy and negatively affects aspects of that person’s life. Anorexia nervosa and bulimia are two of the most well-known eating disorders in the United States. By definition, anorexia nervosa is an eating disorder in which a person may restrict the intake of calories due to an obsession with food and weight. Bulimia, on the other hand, is about taking in calories and then purging them either through excessive exercise or vomiting or some other manner. Both of these disorders are characterized by an intense fear of gaining weight, and affect over 24 million people in the United States.
Although these disorders are very well-known, it is difficult to find one single cause that defines them. Many people, especially recently, have marked media saturation as a major contributing factor to these disorders. According to the ANAD website, the perception of the “ideal female body” represented in American media is representative of only 5% of women in the United States. The women in the magazines don’t even look like the women in the magazines! There is so much editing and touching up done to photos in order to preserve this perverted ideal.
According to statistics on eating disorders, 95% of people with eating disorders are people between the ages of 12 and 25, and in January 2014, Florida State University conducted a study testing the correlation between Facebook usage and eating disorders in college students. The study found female college students who placed emphasis on receiving “likes” and comments on pictures and status updates tend to have a higher chance of disordered eating.
Social media is a way for us to present the ideal version of our lives on a day to day level. We can relate ourselves to those idealized versions of beauty in our own way by only presenting the good parts of your life. We are bombarded by not only the 5% in media sources, but we are also constantly saturated with the other 95% of “normal” people through social media. We see our friends, families, acquaintances, etc. on Facebook having a great time on Spring Break sipping on margaritas in a bikini, and we can’t help but compare our own lives to theirs. This misguided comparison leaves us feeling like something in our lives is lacking. And, while these feelings may not lead directly to disordered eating, they do create psychological scars inside of us. Whether or not those scars are visible immediately, they are there.
The ideal of beauty is represented in the media in an unrealistic way, and as a way to live up to that ideal, we try to present our own version of perfection to fit the standard set for us by society. It’s important to remember that even though we see these great-looking photos on Facebook, chances are they’re masking the reality behind the lens. A picture represents a still moment in time, but moments can be misleading.
