How does Media impact Body Image on Adolescents?
Body image is a person’s point of view of how they see themselves, physically, and the feelings that arise from that perception. It can either be a positive perspective, which leads to a healthy body image, or a negative perspective, which leads to a poor body image. Unhealthy body image is a result of unrealistic body standards set by the society that often leads to dissatisfaction of one’s appearance. Where does this problem start? In the article “Body Image” published in Gale In Context: Opposing Viewpoints, the writer addresses this issue- “Many people develop body image issues during their teenage years, when bodies increase their stores of muscle and fat and undergo growth spurts.” The article further expands on the point and mentions how this change often leads to an increased sense of insecurity among the teens because they are concerned whether or not they look ‘normal’ due to the unreasonable expectations set by the society due to the Media.
Each generation has its own set of degrees that they think the society would deem as ‘acceptable’ and its own types of influencers. In the twenty-first century, social media plays a major role in promoting ideas of what is perceived as pretty and what is not. Teenagers spend a lot of time on different Social Media apps, such as Instagram, Snapchat, and Facebook, which are meant to be platforms for communication where people can share pictures and can respond to other people by liking their posts and viewing their stories. In the article, “Selfie-Esteem: The Relationship Between Body Dissatisfaction and Social Media in Adolescent and Young Women,” Bindal Makwana, a well versed Psychologist, asserts that increase in usage of social media, especially Facebook and Instagram, may negatively affect adolescent girls and young women in regard to their self-confidence and body satisfaction. Makwana addresses that Social Media leads to a subconscious development of what kind of posts are considered appealing and what others are not based on the number of likes and views received. The amount of likes or views one receives is often seen as a mark of validation and incidentally, this unconscious practice has led to a conscious promotion of certain body standards in these social media platforms.
Makwana’s article reveals that social media usage has increased prominently in the last decade and still continues to increase and she mentions that “Many young women reported obsessing over the number of ‘like’ they were getting, fearing not looking beautiful in their photos.” Even though people may be aware of these activities, they get preoccupied by their need to belong in social media and change their habits to do so. The article “Body Image”, published by Gale, discloses that for girls, the ideal body is typically presented as slim and toned, while for boys, the ideal physique is often one that is strong with a low percentage of body fat. As a result, posts featuring the said body ideals receive more likes and views compared to other posts. This pattern has set the ideals of what is considered desirable body standard and what is not.
An important question is, why do these extremes in body images want to be achieved in the first place? Dina Borzekowski, a global health communication researcher at University of Maryland College Park, and Angela Baye, a researcher at University of California Los Angeles’s Department of Medicine, write in their the article “Body Image and Media Use Among Adolescents,” that the trend for the body ideal can be observed among print and television models and the more successful actors. Since only certain types of body are focused on and represented by the media, female and male adolescents face huge challenges as they construct their body image and address physical and emotional changes because this unrealistic expectation is what is considered ‘normal’. For example, as a routine, a fifteen year old teenager turns on the television only to see muscular men in most movies and then to see men with similar body types posing for advertisements on Instagram. If that teenager is being exposed to a certain body physique on a regular basis, they might feel as if that is the norm. At this point, it can be said that teenagers live their lives via social media and consider the presence of media more important than real life.
Borzekowski and Baye raise an important concern in their article. Idealizing body types have grown hazardous to the very extent that teenagers are driving themselves to eating disorders to get the idealized body types that are promoted influenced by the media as appealing. As this influence of certain types of looks has been increasing, the number of eating disorders also have been increasing, in boys and in girls. Anorexia Nervosa (characterized by restrictive eating patterns and significant weight loss) and Bulimia Nervosa (characterized by binge-purge cycles) are the most familiar eating disorders popular among the adolescents. Subthreshold Anorexia occurs in 1.1% to 3.0% of adolescent females and subthreshold Bulimia occurs in 2.0% to 5.4% of adolescent females, as shown by the statistics of NEDA, National Eating Disorders Association. There is a common misconception that eating disorders are often uncommon among young boys but after a study done by WHO (World Health Organization), there was a 2.9:1 female/male ratio for bulimia nervosa when including partial syndrome. Overall, it is estimated that boys account for 5% to 15% of cases of anorexia and bulimia nervosa. Eating disorders often occur in conjunction with other problems, such as anxiety disorders, depression, and substance abuse.
Another big problem about enforcing body image, is that it promotes certain gender stereotypes. Preceding research on problems with advertising has shown that advertisements in the media portray females with restrictive gender-based stereotypes. The article, “What do adolescent girls learn about gender roles from advertising images?”- written by Kara Chan, the head of the Department of Communication Studies at the Hong Kong Baptist University, Yu Leung Ng, a researcher at Hong Kong Baptist University, and Russell B. Williams, a researcher at Master of Arts in Cultural and Creative Industries, Abu Dhabi- introduces a study conducted in Hong Kong. In the experiment, adolescent girls were asked to take photos of feminine images that depict appropriate or inappropriate gender roles from the media, and analyze what those images mean to them. Most of the advertisements were about beauty products and services, including 22 percent from cosmetics, skin care, or personal care advertisements and 14 percent from advertisements for beauty and slimming treatments. The findings indicate that schoolgirls deduce desirable gender roles from feminine images in advertisements. It can be concluded that such body ideals are stuck onto the minds of people from a young age due to the kind of exposure they’ve had growing up. Advertisements provide a lot of feminine images from which adolescents learn about appropriate and acceptable gender roles and identities. The study established that the extent to which these ‘perfect’ images were investigated, suggests that these images were powerful and fascinating to the adolescent girls. This means that they wanted to resemble the feminine images in advertisements, the ones that promoted traditional female images of gentleness, domestically, and caring. It shows how advertising images influence young consumers and how teenagers interpret these images.
In boys, the prevalence of toxic masculinity can be seen very clearly. Harris O’Malley, a writer, in his article, “The Difference Between Toxic Masculinity and Being A Man”, defines toxic masculinity to be a “narrow and repressive description of manhood, designating manhood as defined by violence, status and aggression.” Manliness is measured in physical strength while emotions are seen as a weakness. Anything that even remotely sways from that ideal, it is considered to be feminine or not masculine enough. This ideal again enforces the muscular body type as the desirable body standard.
What can be done to decrease these severe effects by the media? Courtney Howard, the director of Operations & Business Development at Eating Disorder Hope and Addiction Hope, suggests that one must educate themselves on the extent of the influence of media on their body image and have self control to not give into the ideals pressed on by the media. Research should be conducted to check the relationship between media and body image and intervention along with policies can be used to lessen media’s upsetting impact. It is not only about promoting positive ideas about body images on the media, the public also should know to be more aware of the body ideals that are praised and the body ideals that are looked down upon while focusing on positivity. Despite all the negativity, there have been many large-scale campaigns within the past few years that focus on body positivity and embracing your true self. Howard touches on a campaign called “#WhatMakesMeBeautiful”, a body positive movement, which was a viral success within the eating disorder community and beyond. It showed the need for social media movements that celebrate self-love and beauty via a different lens. From global campaigns and popular hashtags promoting positive body image to small online groups that encourage self-love, social media can make a sense of community that makes handling body image issues feel less difficult. Campaigns like these have made social media less toxic and more body positive. However, there are still many ways social media can be provoking, so it is important to practice self-care in everyone’s use of social media.
One advantage of being a teenager is that they aren’t an adult yet, which means that their parents still play a big role in their lives. Parents should play an active role in their children’s lives and check in on them. In the article, “Healthy Body Images”, Dr. Elisha Carcieri, a clinical psychologist, advises parents to help ensure that their kids feel comfortable in their body by warning them about the negative body ideals on the media from early on. They can also create and increase exposure to media featuring all types of body so that they know that no one desirable body type. Most importantly, parents should also help increase and help build their child(ren)’s self esteem by appreciating and supporting their healthy choices and condemn unhealthy choices.
In conclusion, the media plays a pretty big impact on the lives of teenagers due to its extensive use by them. Although there are positive effects of media on body image, the negative reasons outweigh the positive ones. There are measures being taken by the society to fix the problem it has caused but nevertheless, it is upto the individual to not succumb to the pressures of what is considered to be ‘perfect’ or not.
