“Much has been made of the negative effects of social media sites, particularly those that promote the ‘thin ideal.’ In a recent study, exposure to body-positive imagery on social media was beneficial to young adult men and women alike. Body-positive images, or those that depict ‘normal’ individuals of varying weights, improved overall body satisfaction and…
“Pregnancy and early motherhood are times of increased risk for women with eating disorders. For example, women who experience persistent eating disorder symptoms during pregnancy and the early postpartum period tend to have greater depression and anxiety. Postpartum depression also seems to occur more often in women who currently have or have had an eating…
The Business of Body Hatred: How Meta Profits (Again) from Eating Disorders Blame it on the algorithm. It’s a sentiment most are familiar with in this age of clickbait, doom-scrolling, and digital footprints. The machinations of content dissemination to target audiences for profit have largely been regarded with a healthy dose of suspicion but ultimately…
“One of the first patients that I took care of as a student was a 16-year-old male wrestler, who had actually been struggling for years with an eating disorder before anyone recognized it as an eating disorder. By the time that we saw him, he was obsessed with his weight. He was checking his weight…
“Trends like “legging legs” are part of a long history of harmful body image content that has proliferated online since the early days of the internet. “The minute they ban one hashtag, another one will pop up,” said Amanda Raffoul, an instructor at Harvard Medical School and Boston Children’s Hospital who studies eating disorders. But…
“Black individuals tend to experience anorexia at younger ages than white individuals and may endure the disorder for longer periods of time before recovering; Black teenagers are 50% more likely to have symptoms associated with bulimia compared to white teenagers; Hispanic individuals are more likely to experience bulimia nervosa than non-Hispanic individuals. Despite the need…