Social Media Use Associated with Disordered Eating in Young Adolescents

by | Jan 13, 2020 | 2019, Infant and Children's Health

Written by Joyce Smith, BS. Study suggests that social media use is associated with an increase in disordered eating thoughts and behaviors for both girls and boys.

While decades of studies on media usage and its relationship to body image and eating disorders are available 1, research dealing with the impact of social media on disordered eating (DE),  particularly DE behaviors  such as meal skipping, binge eating and compensatory behaviors in young adolescents is very limited 2. Thus the primary objective of the current research was to explore a potential association between the use of social media such as Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and Tumblr and DE as it pertains to cognition and behaviors in young-adolescent girls and boys.

Wilksch and colleagues 3, in a cross-sectional, exploratory study, collected data from 996 adolescents in grades seven and eight who were attending five private Australian schools. The DE cognition Eating Disorder Examination Questionnaire (ESE-Q) 4 was used to determine disordered eating thoughts and the Project EAT [Project Eating among Teens] 5 questionnaire was used to obtain data on DE behaviors. To determine social media usage, researchers used items from previous body image research in adolescents that related to Facebook, Instagram, Snapshot and Tumblr 6,7.

There was a clear pattern of association between social media use and disordered eating thoughts and behaviors.  These associations were occurring at younger ages than previous studies have shown.

  • Eating disorder behaviors were reported by 51.7% of girls and 45.0% of boys, with meal skipping, eating very little food, and binge eating significantly higher in girls than in boys.
  • A total of 75.4% of girls and 69.9% of boys had at least one social media account where Instagram was the most common and was used by 68.1% of girls and 61.7% of boys.
  • Global EDE-Q scores were significantly higher for girls and boys who had Snapshot and Tumblr media accounts, compared with Facebook and Instagram. Also, greater number of social media accounts was associated with higher DE scores for both cognition and behavior.
  • Girls with Snapchat and Tumblr accounts and boys with Snapchat, Facebook and Instagram were significantly more likely to have both DE behaviors and over-evaluation of shape and weight in the clinical range.
  • Girls who spent more time daily using Instagram had significantly higher Global EDEQ scores and DE behaviors, while this pattern was also found for Snapchat usage and DE behaviors for girls.

This study is consistent with a previous study suggesting that Instagram and Snapshot are greater image- based forms of SM than Facebook and are very popular among young users 8.

Study limitations include a lack of socioeconomic diversity, a consequence of the use of private school children rather than children from both public and private schools. The authors recommend future prospective studies to explore a variety of possible strategies that might mitigate the risk for young children, including a parental role that would limit SM use and would be implemented in preadolescense.

Source: Wilksch, Simon M., Anne O’Shea, Pheobe Ho, Sue Byrne, and Tracey D. Wade. “The relationship between social media use and disordered eating in young adolescents.” International Journal of Eating Disorders (2019).

© 2019 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Posted January 13, 2020.

Joyce Smith, BS, is a degreed laboratory technologist. She received her bachelor of arts with a major in Chemistry and a minor in Biology from  the University of Saskatchewan and her internship through the University of Saskatchewan College of Medicine and the Royal University Hospital in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. She currently resides in Bloomingdale, IL.

References:

  1. Holland G, Tiggemann M. A systematic review of the impact of the use of social networking sites on body image and disordered eating outcomes. Body image. 2016;17:100-110.
  2. Gowers SG, Shore A. Development of weight and shape concerns in the aetiology of eating disorders. The British journal of psychiatry : the journal of mental science. 2001;179:236-242.
  3. Wilksch SM, O’Shea A, Ho P, Byrne S, Wade TD. The relationship between social media use and disordered eating in young adolescents. The International journal of eating disorders. 2019.
  4. Bentley C, Gratwick‐Sarll K, Harrison C, Mond J. Sex differences in psychosocial impairment associated with eating disorder features in adolescents: A school‐based study. International Journal of Eating Disorders. 2015;48(6):633-640.
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