What the experts say II

Social Media Use and Body Image Disorders: Association between Frequency of Comparing One’s Own Physical Appearance to That of People Being Followed on Social Media and Body Dissatisfaction and Drive for Thinness

Reading the title already gives you a good idea of what this study is about. This article by PubMed Central is a very good in depth study about social media use and body dissatisfaction. In the discussing the main results part they say "Our survey aimed to study the links between social media use, body image disorders, and ED prevalence in a teenage and young adult population" (Jiotsa et al, 2021). There were a lot of factors included, such as the person's level of education or their BMI, but for the purpose of this blog, these are the simple results:

"First, we found that ED or at-risk of ED subjects presented significantly different results concerning all social media use parameters. Using platforms such as Facebook and Instagram has been particularly associated with a higher body dissatisfaction and the appearance of ED symptoms. As was expected, in ED or at-risk of ED patients, Body Dissatisfaction rates were higher, as was their Drive for Thinness" (Jiotsa et al, 2021).
No surprise that there is a correlation. On here I haven't talked about eating disorders yet but they are no joke and are hard to recover from and social media is a big perpetrator.

Reference:

Jiotsa, B., Naccache, B., Duval, M., Rocher, B., & Grall-Bronnec, M. (2021). Social media use and body image disorders: Association between frequency of comparing one’s own physical appearance to that of people being followed on social media and body dissatisfaction and drive for thinness. International  Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 18(6), 2880. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18062880