Social media, body image and eating disorders
of the reasons it is so successful in engaging adolescents. It has stolen a share of screen time from TV and, as a result, the mean time children watch TV is falling, 15 but overall screen time is not.
In my own survey I found that 73% of the responses spent over two hours a day on social media. The survey was conducted in a school week, so this is on top of schoolwork and homework and makes up a large proportion of my respondents ’ free time. I believe that Instagram is the most influential site for my study because its pictorial emphasis is particularly effective in facilitating the spread of unhealthy body image through carefully managed and manipulated posts which assist the growth of a culture of body dissatisfaction. The social media market has exploded in the last decade and half, when Facebook launched in 2004 no- one knew what a pervasive and influential impact it was going to have. Facebook is now worth over $350 billion andmakes around $15.08 billion in revenue a year. 16 This is a staggering amount of money for a platform that is completely free to use and explains why it has expanded so rapidly. The reason there is so little existing research into the area is that the industry has grown so quickly and continues to evolve much faster than we are able to analyse. Well-researched journals take years to write, collate and publish, by which time much of the analysis is out-dated. The platforms have already adapted, updated and moved on to something new. For example, Facebook is currently planning to release its own currency, called Libra, that will aim to take a large proportion of the cryptocurrency market (we have no idea what the implications will be of tying currency to social media). Although there is growing awareness of the dangers of social media and schools and charities have begun educating young people about them, it is a constant game of catch-up.
Unreal ideals
In contrast to social media, over the last few decades there has been a lot research into the impact of mass media on eating disorders: magazines, newspapers, adverts, films and television. People are aware of the danger of mass media in influencing and manipulating consumers, 17 and aware of the businesses who profit from people feeling discontent with what they have and needing more. This could be about something materialistic like owning a car or jewellery, or it could be something more abstract like beauty or happiness. Advertising is a well-established, lucrative and pervasive industry. Social media needs to make use of advertising, due to its free-to-use model. In order to become a profitable business, money must be made through advertising and social media platforms have even pioneered a new form of it, targeted advertising. They use personalized adverts selected by algorithms trawling through your personal da ta and discovering patterns and trends. Although, social media don’t create the advertising material, they distribute it very effectively. 15 Yolanda Reid Chassiakos, Jenny Radesky, Dimitri Christakis, Megan A. Moreno, 2016. Children and Adolescents and Digital Media. American Academy of Pediatrics. 16 Rodriguez, Salvador. (2019) Facebook jumps as Stories users and ads show promising growth Available at: https://www.cnbc.com/2019/04/24/facebook-earnings-q1-2019.html (Accessed: 29/03/20). 17 Levine, M.P. and Murnen, S.K., 2009. ‘Everybody knows that mass media are/are not [pick one] a cause of eating disorders’: A critical review of evidence for a causal link between media, negative body image, and disordered eating in females. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology , 28 (1): 9-42.
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