Ep. 28 How Can Social Media Affect Kids Body Image
Nov 01, 2023
Dr Jenny Gourgari
Imagine the profound impact if we could disentangle body satisfaction and self-esteem among our teenagers?
Dr Gourgari presents research that was done to explore the crucial link between body image and self-esteem amongst our youth.
"Body Image and Self-Esteem Among Adolescent Girls: Testing the Influence
of Sociocultural Factors. Daniel Clay et al "
Dr Gourgari is a pediatric endocrinologist, certified in obesity medicine expert and weight loss coach for teens with more than 15 years of experience. She helps teens build healthy habits that last, so they can feel happier, be more confident and love their body again .
Imagine the profound impact if we could disentangle body satisfaction and self-esteem among our teenagers?
Dr Gourgari presents research that was done to explore the crucial link between body image and self-esteem amongst our youth.
"Body Image and Self-Esteem Among Adolescent Girls: Testing the Influence
of Sociocultural Factors. Daniel Clay et al "
Dr Gourgari is a pediatric endocrinologist, certified in obesity medicine expert and weight loss coach for teens with more than 15 years of experience. She helps teens build healthy habits that last, so they can feel happier, be more confident and love their body again .
This is the Lifestyle in Weight Loss for Teens podcast. If you are a mom and want to help your child who is struggling to lose weight, you are in the right place. If you are looking for healthy lifestyle tips, dr Gorgary is here to help you understand the science around safe weight loss in teens and children, because what works for adult weight loss is not always the best for children. This podcast is for educational purposes only. Dr Gorgary does not provide medical, psychological or nutrition therapy advice. You should not use this information to diagnose or treat any health problems without consulting your own medical practitioner and now your host, dr Jenny Gorgary.
Speaker 2:
Hello, welcome to another episode of the Lifestyle in Weight Loss Weight Loss for Teens podcast. This is Dr Jenny Gorgary and I'm here today to talk about body image issues in teenagers. So there's a lot of things that we can cover on this topic, but for this particular episode, I'm only going to focus on one aspect, and that is the social media influence. So it has been shown in many studies so far that the exposure to social media is a huge factor that contributes to body dissatisfaction and can lead to abnormal body image issues. And today's episode I'm going to present one study that was done a few years ago in teenagers in England and wanted to examine this exact thing, which is what is the effect of the exposure of the social media on teenagers' body image issue. So what did the researchers do? They actually asked teenagers from high school to look on different images. So they looked on images that they were models that were very thin. Then they looked at pictures of models that they were average size, and then they look at images that they were a Christmas socks or something like, not even related to any model. So they asked them to look at this picture and they looked at it picture for 15 seconds and after the exposure to the different images, the researchers looked to see what is the body satisfaction or dissatisfaction measurements of girls that were exposed to these images. So they would ask questions that had to do with how satisfied the teenagers were with their body image. So, for example, there would be sentences like I don't most people would consider me good-looking, and then they would ask them that I strongly agree or I definitely disagree with this statement. So there would be like a range, so based on scores, similar to these questions. Then they would make for every girl a score about body satisfaction. Then they would ask them all also questions that had to do with self-esteem. For example, they would ask them on the whole, I'm satisfied with myself, and that would be like strongly agree, moderately agree or strongly disagree. So again they would get a sense of, like their self-esteem. So they asked them to look at these pictures and then whether they were ultra thin and like very thin, average size or not even a model, as I said, and then they would ask questions that had to do with body satisfaction and their self-esteem, and then they compared those values between the groups that they were exposing, the models versus the group that were exposed in non-models and then they would rate them.
Speaker 2:
Now, when they did the analysis, let's see what they came up with. What they found was that the girls that they were exposed to the models of average size and models that they wore very thin, they had lower self-esteem scores and they had lower body satisfaction scores, which is again one of the studies that supports the notion that the social media has a negative effect on the body image perception that we have. I mean, that is true also in adults, but in this particular case we are focusing about teenagers, girls, so this is not an exception. Then they even went one step further than that and they look at the different ages. What they found was that as kids get older because the group was between 11 and 16 years of age so the researchers found that between ages 11 to 16, as kids become older and they become more socially aware of what is considered beautiful or what is a social norm then at the same time that the awareness became higher, at the same time that body satisfaction became lower and their self-esteem scores also were lower. The researchers also wanted to do one extra step in the analysis when they removed the body satisfaction factor from the calculations on the effect on the self-esteem. Then that had resolved, which means that really the lower self-esteem scores were driven mainly by the body satisfaction perception, which is a very important message that currently there are likely a lot of teenagers who link their self-esteem to their body satisfaction. So what does that tell us? That tells us that two things. One is by improving the body satisfaction we can improve the self-confidence of our teenagers, and second, we should put more effort into improving the self-esteem and try to dissociate it from a body satisfaction. These are just my beliefs on what we could do to take this message to the next level, because one the first level is to recognize the problem. The second level is to try to see where we are in the spectrum and what we can do to improve that.
Speaker 2:
Another interesting point from this study was that the body satisfaction seemed to be affected not only by the ultra thin models but also from the models of average size. And I have read somewhere also that there was some suggestion from another study that if there are overweight models then that tends to improve the body satisfaction perception of teenagers, but if it is a normal size it's not enough to help them feel better about their body. So it's not really by itself, probably even the normal weight or the underweight, because it is other factors that go into how these models are presented, and we should spend some time to educate our teenagers, especially in this critical point, when they're starting to become more socially aware of what is considered beautiful, that a lot of these models and a lot of the way they are presented on social media, it is already, after a lot of filters, a lot of makeup and a lot of expensive clothes and Photoshop and all these things that are done in images or even videos on social media that give the image of a perfect body, perfect face, perfect, which may not be. So. The more exposure the kids have today, especially adolescents, the higher the risk for them to develop this unhealthy body image situation. So I would encourage you to start have a conversation around this topic. Perhaps, instead of giving a lecture, you can, if you want, you can, use this podcast as an opportunity to discuss. Hey, did you know that? They did this study and it showed this? What do you think Another approach would be to, while your teenager may be on YouTube or Instagram or Facebook and they make a comment about a model or even a friend or somebody else they had seen and that seems to have a negative effect on how they compare that image they are seeing to themselves. And if you notice that there is some negative effect there, then that can also be a starting point to discuss about body image and the effect on the social media and how strong it is and how far a lot of these images are from reality. So that's all I had to talk about today.
Speaker 2:
I'm going to create future episodes because it is a big concern body image issue in teenagers and in this episode we didn't even touch the fact of actual weight or actual body mass index on body image because in this particular study the researchers did not capture data on the body mass index, which is actually. They also mentioned one of the limitations of this study. The actual title of this manuscript is Body Image and Self-Esteem among adolescent girls testing the influence of sociocultural factors. It was published in Journal of Research on Endolescents in 2005. I'm going to put the title on my show notes. If you found this episode helpful, I encourage you to share it with other families and friends. You can post it on your social media, you can send an email, whatever works for you. I hope we can all try our best to educate our families and our teenagers about the importance of social media on influencing the body image perception we have, and particularly that is true for teenagers. I hope you find this helpful. I'll talk to you soon.
Speaker 1:
Take care Bye If you enjoyed listening to this podcast. I invite you to come check out the Lift program. It's Dr Gorgary's 12-week coaching program for teens and their moms, where we take all this information, we apply it to your daily life and we work together so your teenager learns how to create a healthy lifestyle so they can feel happier, more confident, less stressed and love their body again. Visit the website at lifestyleforteenscom and click on the work with me and free resources to learn more about this program and get free help to start this journey right away. Thanks for tuning in and we'll catch you in the next episode of Lifestyle and Weight Loss for Teens.