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Teenage Body Image

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Teenagers have historically been subject to influences more than other age groups. As teenagers search for their identity, they are subjected to intense pressure from their peers. With the relatively recent advent of social media those pressures are staggering, and this is especially true in one’s body image and the influence of food. People underestimate what social media can do to a person, especially teenagers who are going through puberty and hormonal changes while trying to learn acceptance of their bodies. This is also the age people are the most impressionable and unfortunately many accounts glorify a specific body type on Tumblr, Instagram, and Twitter. These body types are attractive and sexy, yet unattainable for the greater population. …show more content…
Rachel Nuwer, writer for the Smithsonian, quotes in her article,““The teen brain isn’t broken,” Jay Giedd, a child psychiatry researcher at the National Institute of Mental Health, told NPR. Instead, he calls this transitional period “a time of enormous opportunity””. Teenagers are not developing Anorexia because there is a misconnection in their brain, it is due to the impression left from social media sites of what an admirable body type looks like. Consequently, when teenagers log into their Tumblr, Instagram, or Twitter account their brains train themselves into believing that is how their bodies should look like. Because teenagers are so vulnerable, many log into those social media sites and fall victim to the idealization of the perfect body type. According to the National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders(ANAD), “86 percent of college students who have an eating disorder said it started before the age of 20. Anorexia is the third most common chronic illness among teenagers”. From this information I can conclude many people who have or have had an eating disorder started practicing unhealthy eating habits as a teenager. A relatively simple way to start this process and see quick results is to refrain from any calorie intake. From my 10th grade health class, I know not having any calorie intake a body can only burn calories and if continued over a longer period …show more content…
Personally, I have witnessed social media almost ruin the life of one of my teammates. My teammate, who I will call Jessica, was on my high school's varsity cross country team with me. Jessica was fairly lean to begin with, which made her being anorexic harder to notice at first. Eventually, the coaches of our team noticed her losing a little weight, so the head coach would give her some sort of snack, usually a granola bar, to eat after our harder workouts. What she would do next is when it was obvious to most of the team she had some sort of eating disorder. Jessica would crumble up the granola bar in her hands and would dump it in her water bottle to fool the coaches into thinking she ate it. Not long after, the coaches stepped in and addressed the issue. Our head coach contacted her parents and began to take her out of the lineup for meets. About three quarters of the way into the season, Jessica’s parents forced her to go to a rehabilitation center for eating disorders, so she could learn to eat a healthy manner. She was unable to finish the season and was in a rehabilitation center for a few weeks till she reached a certain weight. Jessica would make remarks about celebrities in the media and various comments about their bodies. I did not think much of those few comments during that

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