More than a Body
28 Million People in the United States will suffer from an eating disorder in their life time. (Anderson et.al, 2018). That is roughly 9% of the population.
Eating Disorder: (Def) A range of mental conditions where there is a persistent disturbance of eating behaviors and impairment of physical or mental health.
Although they have been research for a long time, eating disorders remain very misunderstood disorders (Anderson,2018).
Social Media Effects on Recovery
There is a link between certain social media apps and increased body image concerns. These concerns become more prevalent when users frequent “fitspiration” and “thinspiration” pages
Social media can trigger post-traumatic stress disorders and there is a strong correlation between eating disorders and PTSD (Brewerton et. al 2020)
Fitspiration (def) a person or thing that serves as motivation for someone to sustain or improve health and fitness
Thinspiration . (def) used in reference to something or someone that serves as motivation for a person seeking to maintain a very low body weight
- In the above YouTube video the “hashtag” thinspiration is discussed through the eyes of a standup comedian. This standup comedian is recovering from anorexia and often times will use it as his content during his shows. He states that he relapsed while using social media in the past. The term thinspiration is used often in social media and is refers to social media content that inspires users to be thin. This can be triggering for those who are recovering or are suffering from an eating disorder
Triggers
When in recovery, social media can trigger people to have disordered eating behaviors. Posts about weight loss, and workouts, along with filtered pictures can cause people to feel out of control. This can make those recovering and dealing with eating disorders feel like they need to lose weight as well to reach these unrealistic standards.
This above video highlights the social media platform Tiktok and how the narrators believes it promotes health eating. The video goes through several different trends and hacks that are promoted on the app. Several of these include limiting your daily calories to extremely low amounts such as 800 or 1200 calories a day. There are other hacks that highlight ways to feel full without actually eating food which are highlighted as “skinny girl hacks”. The narrator of the YouTube video expresses her feelings that the Tiktok app glamorizes disordered eating and could be triggering for those who are currently suffering or recovering from an eating disorder. She highlights as well the more that a person views this content the more often it appears on their page due to an algorithm.
Taking control of your recovery
Only follow pages that make you good about yourself
Don’t be afraid to unfollow pages that are triggering
Take breaks from social media if and when needed
Try filling your social media with body positive pages and a range of different topics that do not involve body image as well
Resources for Recovery
Recovery Record Eating Disorder Management (Free eating disorder recovery App)
www.betterhelp.com (Online therapy)
choosingtherapy.com ( Online rescource)
Rise up and recovery app
You are stronger than your eating disorder.
References
Anderson, L. K., Claudat, K., Cusack, A., Brown, T. A., Trim, J., Rockwell, R., Nakamura, T., Gomez, L., & Kaye, W. H. (2018). Differences in emotion regulation difficulties among adults and adolescents across eating disorder diagnoses. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 74(10), 1867–1873. https://doi-org.ezproxy.neit.edu/10.1002/jclp.22638
Brewerton, T. D., Perlman, M. M., Gavidia, I., Suro, G., Genet, J., & Bunnell, D. W. (2020). The association of traumatic events and posttraumatic stress disorder with greater eating disorder and comorbid symptom severity in residential eating disorder treatment centers. International Journal of Eating Disorders, 53(12), 2061–2066. https://doi-org.ezproxy.neit.edu/10.1002/eat.23401
Groth, T., Hilsenroth, M., Boccio, D., & Gold, J. (2020). Relationship between Trauma History and Eating Disorders in Adolescents. Journal of Child & Adolescent Trauma, 13(4), 443–453. https://doi-org.ezproxy.neit.edu/10.1007/s40653-019-00275-z