The first computer was invented in 1947; the internet followed in the late 1960s. In the 1970s, eating disorders became an epidemic. When the first computer was invented, no one had any idea of the impact it would have in the world, as the same with the internet. Over the past ten years, there has been a dramatic increase in the use of social media among teenagers. Whether it be Instagram, Twitter, Tumblr, or a magazine, teenagers today spend a majority of their time looking at images of someone else. Though there are a few positive outcomes of the increased use of social media, many times things do not remain so uplifting. Research today shows that social media has a negative effect on teenage girl's self-esteem and body images, and can cause them to go to extremes to make themselves look like the people they spend so much of their time looking at. Low self-esteem, anorexia, and body-dissatisfaction are just some of the negative effects social media can have on the mentality of teenage girls.

There are two main issues with social media today: the amount of time spent using it, and the fake images that it fills people's minds with. A main issue with social media is the significant amount of time spent using it. In a recent survey conducted at a high school, forty-two percent of teenagers say they spend up to three hours a day using social media. According to recent research, social media has become the new ‘medium’ through which teenagers communicate. Today’s teens are spending more time interacting online, and less time actually going out and experiencing the presence of other people their age. Sixty-one percent of teenagers say that social media, at some point in their lives, has made them feel depressed. Only thirty percent of teenagers who were conducted in the survey believe that they could go a week without using some form of social media. Not only are teenagers who spend a majority of their time on social media more prone to social-impairment issues, but research today shows that teens who use social media frequently are more prone to body-image issues. On the issue of social skills, Dr. Catherine Steiner-Adair says, “There's no question kids are missing out on very critical social skills. In a way, texting and online communicating—it's not like it creates a nonverbal learning disability, but it puts everybody in a nonverbal disabled context, where body language, facial expression, and even the smallest kinds of vocal reactions are rendered invisible."(Steiner-Adair, Catherine) So in today’s world, social media is not only contributing factor to social-interaction disorders, but it is now found that social media can be influential when it comes to body-image issues. As the continued use of social media increases, the number of teenage girls with diseases relating back to body-image issues increases as well. When interviewed, one anonymous teenagers tells in an interview why she decided to refrain from using social media. This particular teenager says that she found herself allowing too much time to be spent on social media. Not only did she find herself spending too much time online, but she claimed it was making her stressed out and depressed. The anon says that the pressure to find the “perfect picture” led to her feel bad at herself. She looked at the pictures of other teenagers her age online, she came into the realization that she did not look like the girls she was seeing online. This led to a sense of depression, as well as a sense of self-consciousness. Because of this, she deleted her Instagram.

At the core of the issue involving photos online is photo-shopping. Photo-shopping is defined as, "to alter (a digital image) with Photoshop software or other image-editing software especially in a way that distorts reality (as for deliberately deceptive purposes)." (Merriam Webster Dictionary) However, photo-shopping today leads to more than adding a cool background to a picture, or editing out a fence in a shot. Many leading social media pages use photo-shopping to edit the way they look. With today's technology, people are able to not only whiten their teeth or clear their skin, but they are able to edit their bodies in severe ways. Both years and pounds can be taken off of a person with simply a click of a button. Yes, it is obvious when someone has seemingly lost weight over-night, but the majority of the time it is extremely hard to tell when someone has photo-shopped their image. The negative side of photo-shopping is the unrealistic standards it sets, particularly for girls. When girls log onto the social media of their choosing, they are unknowingly looking at hundreds of unrealistic-standards. Instead of looking at accurate depictions of their peers, many girls are looking at girls who have impractically skinny bodies, or skin that is impossibly clear for girl's their age. Photo-shopped images have been proven to be one of the main contributors to the negative effects of social media on teenage girls’ today.

Eating disorders and anorexia are two of the leading negative's effects that social media has on society, particularly girls, today. Many surveys today convey the idea that girls are more prone to the negative effects of social media. The issue with social media today, as mentioned before, is the unrealistic standards it sets for girls. When looking at these pictures of girls whom have unnaturally skinny bodies and un-proportionate measurements, many girls begin to believe that this is the normal. This belief can lead to many negative things, such as eating disorders, anorexia, and body-dissatisfaction. The National Eating Disorder Association (NEDA) reports a dramatic increase in the amount of reported eating disorder cases, also referred to as ED's, in the last few years. In the United States alone, twenty-million women will suffer from some type of ED in their lifetime. (Compared to ten-million men). The three main types of eating disorders are: anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, and binge eating disorder. Anorexia nervosa is one of the most common, and results in inadequate food intake which leads to an overall body weight that is significantly below average. Bulimia nervosa is defined by two main characteristics: “Frequent episodes of consuming very large amount of food followed by behaviors to prevent weight gain, such as self-induced vomiting,” (National Eating Disorder Association) while at the same time having a self-esteem that is overly dependent on body image. Much like Bulimia nervosa, a binge eating disorder is tied to over consuming food, but the difference with a binge eating disorder is “the binge eating is out of control, such as eating when not hungry, eating to the point of discomfort, or eating alone because of shame about the behavior.” (National Eating Disorder Association” Studies from NEDA conclude that forty to sixty percent of middle-school girls show concern about their body weight, and worry about becoming "too fat". So where does social media play into all of this?

On a Monday in September of 2013, the Data Pack on the social media website ‘Instagram’ released an unofficial list of hashtags banned from the site. The terms ranged from derogatory terms to simple things, such as “#photo”. One of the most prominent groups of terms banned from the social-media site were those promoting anorexia, bulimia, and other forms of eating disorders. Back in 2012, Twitter, Instagram and Tumblr went under fire for “the proliferation of eating disorder promotion.” In response, Instagram added the following paragraph to their guidelines:

“Don't promote or glorify self-harm. While Instagram is a place where people can share their lives with others through photographs, any account found encouraging or urging users to embrace anorexia, bulimia, or other eating disorders; or to cut, harm themselves, or commit suicide will result in a disabled account without warning. We believe that communication regarding these behaviors in order to create awareness, come together for support and to facilitate recovery is important, but that Instagram is not the place for active promotion or glorification of self-harm.”

The reason for the majority of these out-lashes are in response of things such as #thinspo. This particular hashtag, which was one of the many banned by Instagram, stands for “thinspiration”, meaning inspiration to lose weight and become thin, sometimes unrealistically. When looked up, images fill the search of girls with protruding ribs, stick-sized thighs, and unrealistic bodily proportions. One of the main issues with this new-found weapon of technology is its accessibility. Whether a teen uses Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, or Tumblr, these images are just a click away. Not only does social media contribute to these issues, but modeling agencies and real-life advertisements are using skinnier and skinnier girls. The lack of limitation on these sources is continually proving to be one of the main issues. Girls, whether they are ten or twenty-two, can find just about anything that would be needed to trigger negative body images. Originally, there was a plan to negate the effects of #thinspo. Change.org, who calls themselves, “the world’s platform for change” created a petition to ban #thinspo from the majority of social networking sites. The petition got over one-thousand five hundred signatures, but it was not quite enough to cause an impact. Only Tumblr, one of the main social networking sites, banned the tag.

“Reasons to Lose” is a blog that was created in 2012 by Paige Padilla. This particular #thinspiration blogger says she is different, claiming that the reasons to lose weight on her page are in “healthy ways.” Padilla first created her Tumblr account to motivate herself to lose weight in order to be able to row on a collegiate level. Since then, thousands of pictures of skinny girls with “motivational” sayings fill the site every day. Reasons to lose are submitted to the blog, where they are layered over a picture and sent out for the world to see. Many questions the reason why such a thing would be created, as blogs and websites like “Reasons to Lose” have been under strong critique in the last few years. The girl behind the “Reasons to Lose” claims:

“I really wanted to be able to row in college. But I’m short. And if you’re short, it’s really hard to row in college at a Division I level unless you’re a lightweight. So I really, really wanted to lose weight, and that was my motivating factor. But then I got more into, like, wondering what other people’s reasons to lose weight were. I wanted to be a good rower; other people wanted to look good in a bikini. So I made this blog called “Reasons to Lose,” and people just started submitting everything.”

Everything refers to reasons ranging from looking good in a bikini, to being thin enough that people can “pick me up and spin me in a circle.” Though these sound dangerous in themselves, other submissions, made mostly by fellow anonymous Tumblr bloggers, take a more dangerous turn. Padilla, in her interview with The Atlantic, says:

“I got one that said, "So I can see my ribcage." Or "So I can weigh as much as [Lia]," this character in Wintergirls. That book is about girls who have eating disorders, and one of them dies. "So I can weigh under 100 pounds." That one, it's hard—some girls can weigh under 100 pounds. But I looked her up and this girl was 5'9". She's one of the people I actually reached out to and said, "Please please please, you need to realize that that's not healthy and you're going to do serious damage to your body.”

According to her statement in her interview, Padilla says one of the reasons there is such an issue with pro-anorexia and pro-bulimia websites is due to the accessibility of the photos used for blogs such as “Reasons to Lose”. Padilla also claims that websites and magazines use photos of girls who are too thin, which encourages girls to be as thin as the models they spend time looking at. Padilla claims she only takes pictures off of search engines, where they are pulled from modeling agencies and personal blogs.
       

The search for the perfect picture, even for something as a blog about reasons to lose weight, all relate back to the pressure put on girls to achieve the perfect picture. Many girls struggle to achieve the perfect picture, and some are even willing to go to extreme measures, resulting in things such as eating disorders. In the contrary, many girls are taking steps to remove themselves from social media, as they realized the negative effects that social media was having on them. One twenty-seven year old living in New York, only known as Donna, shared her story with USA Today on why she refuses to have a Facebook of Instagram account. Donna claims it is one way she believes she is protecting herself. Donna suffered from bulimia all throughout her teenage years, and was a case who suffered from nearly every side effect: loss of menstruation, dental erosion, swollen glands, and a half a dozen hospitalizations. Back in high school, Donna was a part of an online forum where binge eating was encouraged, and eating was reprimanded. Now, Donna hopes to avoid further suffering by avoiding all forms of social media. Donna says, “Facebook and Instagram are very image-driven, so I try to avoid that." In an effort to avoid re-immersing herself back into an unhealthy relationship online, Donna averts social media at all costs.
       

According to the National Eating Disorder Association, one of the main ways to prevent an eating disorder is to have a strong self of self that is unrelated to looks. NEDA claims that prevention is the best way to avoid encountering a form of anorexia, and while it is a harsh disease, treatment is available. But how do we have a strong sense of self-one unrelated to looks-when we spend the majority of our time on social media, looking at other people; most likely who are perceived as skinnier and prettier? In today’s society, more pressure is put on teenage girls by social media especially to be thin, and all of this relates back to the negative effects that social media has on teenage girls. As teenagers continue to spend more and more time online, interacting with someone behind a screen rather than face to face, their dynamic of interacting is changing. Research shows that more and more teens have social-impairment issues, and some doctors and scientists blame some of the issues their patients face on the lack of interaction the teenager has with other people their age.

Spending significant amounts online is not the only problem people face when analyzing those on the internet. Research is showing that the number of cases of anorexia, bulimia, and other ED’s is momentous compared to what is was in the past. As the pressure to be thin builds, many girls go to extreme efforts to lose weight. “Extreme efforts” can be anything from searching #thinspiration, to following a blog on Tumblr about “Reasons to Lose”. As proven by research, these issues can all relate back to the amount of time spent on the internet, searching images and using different forms of social media. The amount of time spent online can encourage the development of negative behaviors such as anorexia, bulimia, and other forms of eating disorders. In order to stop this, many say that girl’s must develop a strong sense of self before spending prominent amounts of time on the internet. By looking at these pictures, individuals form the idea that these girls are what they need to look like, for multiple reasons. However, feeling the need to look like a severely underweight person can encourage anorexia, bulimia, and eating disorders. As Marya Hornbacher said in her memoir, “We turn skeletons into goddesses and look to them as if they might teach us how to not need.”

Works Cited
"Adolescent Girls and Body Image." National Association of Social Workers. NASW, Nov. 2001. Web. 25 Feb. 2015.
Ehmke, Rachel. "Teens and Social Media." Child Mind Institute. N.p., 26 Nov. 2013. Web. 20 Feb. 2015.
Duca, Lauren. "Can Thinspiration Really Be #Banned From Instagram?" The Huffington Post. The HuffingtonPost.com, 28 Aug. 2013. Web. 24 Feb. 2015.
Farfan, Guillermo. "Social Anxiety in the Age of Social Networks." Association for Psychological Science RSS. Observer, n.d. Web. 20 Feb. 2015
Fetters, Ashley. "An Epidemic, Basically." The Atlantic. The Atlantic, 08 May 2013. Web
Hornbacher, Marya. Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia. New York, NY: HarperCollinsPublishers, 1998. Print.
The Merriam-Webster Dictionary. Springfield, MA: Merriam-Webster, 2004. Print.
Pilieci, Vito. "Is Social Media Harming Our Mental Health, Researchers Wonder?" National Post Is Social Media Harming Our Mental Health Researchers Wonder Postmedia News, 25 Mar. 2012. Web. 24 Feb. 2015
Rojas, Marcela. "Social Media Helps Fuel Some Eating Disorders." USA Today. The Journal News, 01 June 2014. Web.
Sunstrum, Kelsey. "How Social Media Affects Our Self-Perception." Pysch Central. World of Psychology, 2014. Web. 18 Feb. 2015.
"Totally In Control." Social Issues Research Centre. SIRC, 2014. Web.
"Treatment." Nation Eating Disorder Association. NEDA, n.d. Web. 08 Jan. 2015.