By Jennifer Gerson

Experts say the relationship between social media, self-comparison, body image and self-harm means that there’s no singular culprit in the youth mental health crisis. 

 In May, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy issued a new advisory on the effects social media usage can have on teen mental health, specifically calling attention to the way it can perpetuate body dissatisfaction, disordered eating behaviors and social comparison in adolescent girls. 

Videos and pictures on image-based social media platforms can trigger intense episodes of self-comparison in adolescent and teen girls. Because of their still-developing brains, they may process this self-comparison in ways that can pose real risks to their mental health — and lives. Suicide is the second leading cause of death among those with anorexia nervosa, and suicidal behavior is more likely among those with bulimia nervosa and binge eating disorder. 

The more teenage girls are on social media and exposed to image-based social media in particular, the more likely they are to have poor body image,” said Amanda Raffoul, an instructor at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and an expert on eating disorder prevention. 

Since eating disorders have among the highest mortality rates of any psychiatric illness, and they also elevate a person’s risk of dying by suicide, awareness about the connection between social media and disordered eating is an important tool for parents and those who works with young people to have. Also important, though, is not scapegoating social media for adverse mental health outcomes without a more nuanced understanding of the dynamics at play.

According to a 2022 study done by the Pew Research Center:

• 92 percent of teen girls report using YouTube.
• Another 73 percent say they use TikTok.
• 69 percent say they use Instagram.
• 64 percent say they use Snapchat.

Girls are more likely than boys to say they spend too much time on social media — 41 percent to 31 percent — and also are more likely than boys to say that it would be hard for them to give up social media, 58 percent compared to 49 percent, the survey found. 

One problem that drives the development of eating disorders and self-harming behavior, Raffoul said, is a societal acceptance of body dissatisfaction in teen girls as normal. 

This story was originally published by The 19^th. 

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