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Screen Time in Youth
Society is used to the negative impacts of impossibly thin, airbrushed models on the covers of magazines. Even if people know it is not realistic, it sets a precedent for beauty standards - it feels like something people should strive towards. But what happens in a digital age with consistent opportunities for comparison? Ample literature has been written about the adverse effects the modelling industry and celebrities have on young women, but never before have people been able to carry a multitude of media in their pockets. The rapid evolution of technology that brought about the digital age in the 70s and 80s was remarkable, but it also brought a new host of problems to consider. The repercussions of unrealistic media can now extend beyond pop culture images and into the feeds of family and friends. In 2020, Statistics Canada reported that 84% of Canadians 15 years and older own a smartphone for personal use, with students in grades 7-12 spending up to an average of 7 hours a day on screens - more than 3.5x the recommended limit of two hours a day (Nature Canada, 2018). U.S. teens' favourite social media platforms were surveyed to be Snapchat at 34%, TikTok at 29%, and Instagram at 25% (Piper Sandler, 2020). With Statistics Canada reporting that 43% of people 15 and older check their phone at least every 30 minutes, and almost half (48%) of high school students showing signs of problematic electronic use, such as not being able to control their time spent on them, neglecting homework, losing sleep and feeling anxious about not using electronics (Nature Canada, 2018). It is not difficult to see how our present overuse of social media could have an impact on youth’s body image and overall mental health.
Effects of Social Media on Mental Health
In a nation-wide survey of adolescents in grades 8 to 12, found that teens who spent more time on social media were more likely to report mental health issues than those who spent more time on non-screen activities such as in-person social interaction, sports, and reading (Twenge et al., 2018). These mental health effects are particularly challenging for young girls, who are more likely than boys to be dissatisfied with their body and weight (Body Image in Childhood, n.d.). A survey conducted by Girl Guides showed that 59% of girls feel pressure to conform to unrealistic standards about what it means to be a girl. When they try to meet these social expectations about how they should look or act, 55% said it negatively impacted their self-esteem - more so with heavy social media users at 71% (Girl Guides, 2017).
What Is Body Image and Who Is at Risk?
Body image can be defined as how you see or picture yourself - it includes what you believe about your appearance, how you feel about your body, and how you experience or feel in your body (National Eating Disorders Association, n.d.). A positive body image is seeing one’s body for what it is and accepting it. In contrast, a negative body image involves a distorted perception of self and can result in shame, anxiety, and self-consciousness (National Eating Disorders Association, n.d.). In some cases, someone’s bodily appearance may not even be a concern to them.
Emilie Lacroix is a newly hired lecturer in the UNB Department of Psychology with a research focus on better understanding body image and disordered eating. After dropping out of fashion design school in Paris, France, she found a passion for psychology research at McGill University in Montréal. Her interest in body image and disordered eating was nurtured in first-hand experiences with women in the fashion industry and leading mental health workshops during her undergraduate studies.
In one of the recent studies, she collaborated on, Ms. Lacroix and her colleagues explored how body image develops and changes over time. They followed 757 teenagers over four years every year from age 11 to 15 and measured their body image using the body esteem scale (BES), where participants rate various aspects of themselves on a five-point scale (Body Esteem Scale (BES), 2021). They found that 60% of teenagers did not have high body esteem, with girls being consistently worse off than boys. Teasing about appearance, low global self-esteem, early dieting, and mood predicted later body image development, with dieting being one of the strongest predictors. They also found that body esteem levels were already relatively stable from age 11, suggesting that prevention programs that promote body confidence delivered in early adolescence may be a bit late (Lacroix et al., 2020, #). Body dissatisfaction develops early, with girls as young as six years old expressing concerns about their weight or shape (National Eating Disorders Association, n.d.).
Ms. Lacroix hopes that we can improve programming that promotes body confidence in youth by increasing our understanding of how body image-related risk factors develop and using these insights to advocate for systemic changes in policy and media. These prevention programs may reduce the burden of eating disorders, which have the highest mortality rate of all psychiatric disorders (10-15%) (NIED, n.d.).
What Social Media Platforms Are the Most Harmful?
The Royal Society for Public Health (RSPH) and the Young Health Movement (YHM) published a new report called “#StatusOfMind,” where they examined the positive and negative effects of social media on young people’s health. Based on the rating youth gave to each platform for each health and well-being category (such as sleep, body image, fear of missing out (FOMO), etc.), the five most popular platforms were given a net average score. YouTube was rated as the most positive social media platform, and Instagram was ranked as the most negative (RSPH, 2017). Apps like Facetune make reshaping your face and body to align with current beauty trends terrifyingly easy in photos and videos (no need for the complexity of Photoshop). With a simple slide bar of editing options similar to regular photo editing on cell phones, it is clear why the app has been downloaded over 60 million times since it was released. It is now a reality that anything posted online by friends and family has the potential to be edited in some way, from blemishes to entire body shapes.
More recently, Meta Platforms added a feature to their social networking services, Facebook and Instagram, where users have limited access to the number of likes a post receives. It is intended to give users more control over their social media experience and reduce the problems associated with social comparison. However, exercising these features may be difficult for adolescents- viewing photos with many likes stimulates neural regions associated with reward processing, social cognition, imitation, and attention (Sherman et al., 2016). The addictive patterns resulting from heavy social media use are similar to those seen in the brains of people with substance use disorders (Hilliard, 2019). After testing the features, Instagram released an announcement that due to the mixed response, the feature was made optional (Instagram, 2021). A possible failure of this feature is that the likes of the user's posts were not hidden; they just could not view the number of likes on the posts of others.
How Do We Develop a Positive Body Image?
Because social media is designed to be addictive, quitting social media cold turkey may not be a realistic option. It can be used to connect people to their family and friends who may not be seen otherwise (such as during the pandemic) or for school activities. Certainly, one proposed solution is to delete all social media and go off the grid. Still, Bailey Parnell, who performed a Ted Talk on the topic, says people can “practice safe social” by monitoring how they feel when they scroll on social media and removing things that make them feel unhappy. For some people, that might mean unfollowing celebrities that make them feel self-conscious about their bodies. For others, it might mean unfriending someone who is constantly posting their travel adventures or hang-outs to avoid FOMO, or curating their feed by following more body positive media influencers. Lastly, she mentions the importance of being a good role model online because social media is not inherently harmful - it depends on how people use it. She says, “-if I spend two of those hours on social media, then I prefer my experiences to be full of inspiration, laughs, motivation, and a whole lot of grumpy cat and Disney movies.” (Tedx Talks & Parnell, 2017). Social media can be tailored to be a more positive experience if users practice assessing how their feed makes them feel.
Take-Aways
Social media isn’t going away any time soon, so it’s essential to be equipped with the tools needed to traverse it in a healthy way for mental health and body image. Minimize screen time when possible, be educated about proper social media use, and most importantly, learn to recognize when social media elicits a negative personal emotional response.
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