The research data on the roles of media, peers and family raise the question on which is the main cause of eating disorders development in adolescence. These factors have explicit emotional, psychological and social impact on teens, leading them to adopt unhealthy eating habits.
For media, it plays an excessive role in the socialization of adolescents. Movies, TV, and the web provide teens with a window into prevalent culture which have shown to promote society ideal standards (to be thin) and measures of beauty through media materials. These platforms also provide dieting methods and diet foods that encourages adolescents to mimic, adopt and purchase by associating if an individual is skinny, he or she would be successful and happy (Yamamiya, Cash, Melnyk, Posavac. H and Posavac, S, 2005). Hence, media may be the primary cause of teenagers developing eating disorders because it creates the pressure to meet unrealistic beauty standards through establishments of expectation on appearance which leads to higher body dissatisfaction within adolescents. Yet, it may be an overstatement for media to be the main cause as media may not necessarily influence adolescents to be dissatisfied with their body and thus, resort to unhealthy eating habits to attain their ideal body. Instead, adolescents with body dysmorphic can look for magazines and other media channels and not the predicted inverse correlation (Field et. al, 2008; Holmstrom, 2004). With that, there is thus, inconsistent and little data that proves media is the direct cause of eating disorder development in adolescence.
Peers are a medium that underpins the ideas of physical perfection via group conformity and verbal exchanges on the evaluation and acceptance of adolescents. As...
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The complications that accompany body image have long been an issue in society. Body image is the sense of how an individual views his or her own body as compared to others in society, or what is considered to be the ideal body image. There are many different factors that effect ones body image, but a major influence is the media. The media has long been associated with eating disorders such as anorexia nervosa and bulimia. Anorexia nervosa is an eating disorder where an individual participates in self-starvation, and bulimia is an eating disorder where an individual will eat as much as he or she wishes and then purges the previously eaten food. These are two destructive eating disorders that are associated with a negative body image. This comes to question, does media have an influence on creating a negative body image, which may inherently lead to eating disorders like anorexia nervosa and bulimia? Anorexia nervosa and bulimia affect various age groups but is extremely common in adolescence and emerging adulthood. During this stage in an individual’s lifespan there is a lot going on with ones psychological development as well as body. How an adolescent views his or her body image be highly impacted by how the media portrays what the ideal body image is. According to Berger (2015), “as might be expected from a developmental perspective, healthy eating begins with childhood habits and family routines” (p.415). If proper eating habits are not implemented negative body image and eating disorders that are associated with media becomes further predominant in adolescence and emerging adulthood.
Rastam, Maria. (1992). Background factors in anorexia nervosa. European Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. 1, 54-64.
The media uses means such as social media, magazines, and television to influence people, specifically teenagers. Adolescence can be a confusing time for everyone, but teenage girls are more vulnerable to their influence due to their emotional maturity. Although girls currently believe that this impossible body image is expected of them, they develop eating disorders because of it. For example, the Victoria's secret fashion show and underwear commercials help set up the impossible beauty standard all girls and women are trying to achieve. Those models live by a strict diet and exercise routine plus their photos are manipulated in order to look the way they do. If models don't look thin enough, they will “frequently have collarbones, ribs, and even hips erased to make them look thinner (Body Image-Photo Manipulation).” Magazines are also a huge part of media's influence. It is common to find teenage girls reading fashion magazines. One issue of the popular magazine, Vogue, “was found to contain 144 manipulated images, including the cover (Body Image-Photo Manipulation).” It is normal to be conce...
The frequent use of media also contributes to the fact that people become influenced by what they see in the media. 8 out of 10 Americans watch television on a daily basis. Younger people are more prone to developing eating disorders and becoming influenced by media; they are the ones who use media more often. Young children from the ages of 8-18 are engaged with some type of media for approximately 7.5 hours a day. Of those 7.5 hours, most of it is watching television that is filled with influential commercials. Children even are influenced from the cartoons they watch. The cartoons and videos they watch often stress the importance of being attractive. One of the most common forms of influential advertisements and pictures are in teen magazines which are directed towards young, adolescent girls. The increasing use of media has a correlation with the increasing number of victims dealing with an eating disorder. Media has become easier to access and is needed for more things. For example, smart phones make accessing media like social media easier and since they are portable, you can use them where ever you go. Media provided influential content in which young kids can learn th...
One of the main external factors in the development of an eating disorder is the media. The media objectifies both men and women throug...
One major issue that continues to arise from the influence of media on children in our society is issues with eating disorders. According to National Eating Disorders, 80% of Americans watch television for over three hours daily (Media, Body Image, and Eating Disorders). Being exposed to this much media daily exposes young kids and adolescents to skewed ideas of beauty and skewed standards of body image. Children and Adolescents are also constantly exposed to these images through advertising online, on billboards, in magazines, on transportation, etc. The images we see in the media are not even physically possible without the help of photo-shopping. Because of this, many kids and adolescents try to achieve the same appearance and end up developing eating disorders. An ongoing study funded by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood institute shows that 40% of girls 9 and 10 years old have tried to lose weight (Teen Health and Media). Girls ages 9 and 10 years old should not even be remotely worried about their weight, yet being exposed to constant media in today’s society has led to severe body image issues. According to the National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated disorders, 8 million people in the US have an eating disorder, 90% of those are women, and they usually begin in teens but may begin as early as 8 years old. (Teen Health and Media). These
Anorexia nervosa (AN) is an disorder that has been most commonly diagnosed in adolescence with the highest at-risk group being women between ages 15 and 22 years old (Hodes, et al., 2000). In the United States, the occurrence of anorexia nervosa is estimated between 0.5% and 2% of the general population, and 0.8 million of the juvenile population (Fisherman, 2006). AN is an illness that has been around for quite some time but has recently become progressively more relevant in society today. This increase could be due to social factors such as the pressure to fit into society’s ideal body image, environmental, psychological, or other social factors may be contributing to the more rapidly development of AN. The exact causes of this disorder are unknown but anorexia has become the third most common chronic illness among adolescents and currently the incidents of AN are increasing in western countries (ANAD, 2014).
Eating disorders, such as anorexia and bulimia, are very unique and complex mental disorders. They cannot be simplified into a single cause, such as the media’s influence (Goldring). However, many statistics show the media affects girls, especially young ones, significantly.
There are many more reasons to developing an eating disorder other than the media. After looking at the affects of media and how researchers explore the concept of development: we will now focus on the other key opponents to the development. Ultimately, if a person’s life situation, environment, and/or genetics leave them open to an Eating ...
The media has a crucial influence on adolescents. Golan, Hagay and Tamir (2013) stated that “Since puberty, by its very nature, is associated with weight gain, adolescents frequently experience frequently experience dissatisfaction with their changing bodies” (p. 1). Young boys grow up with the expectation of having to become a strong, muscular, masculine man. Young girls see skinny models and movie stars and grow up thinking that it is only socially acceptable and attractive if they are also skinny, or very thin. “In a culture that glorifies thinness some adolescents, mostly girls, become excessively preoccupied with their physical appearance and begin to diet obsessively in an effort to achieve or maintain a thin body (Golan, Hagay & Tamir, 2013, 1). Little girls play with dolls that have narrow waists, full busts, lots of makeup and their hair done a certain way. Advertisers and manufacturers are portraying a particular body image with the dolls, and this makes little girls form an opinion on how they should look. “Young girls may engage in conversations...
Levine, Michael P., and Sarah K. Murnen. "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 & Clinical Psychology 28.1 (2009): 9-42. Academic Search Premier. Web. 28 Mar. 2014.
Although eating disorders stem from several different factors, including psychological, emotional, social, and biological, there is usually one major source that influence people to develop an eating disorder. Those in an abusive, low-income household tend to have a higher risk for developing an eating disorder than those in a higher-income household. Biological factors of eating disorders can often come from parents with a history of eating disorders or whose parents are attempting to raise children while battling an eating disorder. Though in most cases, the children of parents with an eating d...
To begin, social media has created unrealistic standards for young people, especially females. Being bombarded by pictures of females wearing bikinis or minimal clothing that exemplifies their “perfect” bodies, squatting an unimaginable amount of weight at a gym while being gawked at by the opposite sex or of supermodels posing with some of life’s most desirable things has created a standard that many young people feel they need to live up to. If this standard isn’t reached, then it is assumed that they themselves are not living up to the norms or the “standards” and then therefore, they are not beautiful. The article Culture, Beauty and Therapeutic Alliance discusses the way in which females are bombarded with media messages star...