Eating Disorders And Social Media

In the modern day more and more forms of eating disorders are becoming seemingly prevalent in our western societies all around the world. From commonly known disorders such as bulimia and anorexia through to disorders like pica, an eating disorder is not one’s lifestyle choice as it is defined as a mental illness, which is characterised by abnormal eating habits. In particular, Bulimia nervosa is an emotional disorder defined by repeated episodes of binge eating followed by compensatory behaviours like purging or laxatives. In addition, people with bulimia place excessive emphasis on their body shape. Commonly leading to a person’s self-worth being defined by the way they look. Some signs that tend to characterize people with bulimia is food

Although, the majority of people that suffer from bulimia are young white females making up 85-90%. This is influenced by a combination of factors including culture, family, personality, genetics, biology, and trauma. On the other hand, sociology suggests it is due to vulnerability on social media and extreme social pressures contributing to poor self-esteem. Girls in the modern day are subtlety influenced and surrounded by slim, pretty, tanned, toned models on TV, in magazines, and all over social media distorting what they see as the “right” body shape and making young girls think that this is what’s healthy and supposably normal in society. Bulimia effects the victim with various factors of health like social, emotional and physical and does not just effect the person suffering but also effects the people around them such as friends and family. Furthermore, we are seeing increasing incidence in young people with crumpling self-esteem numbers. A survey by Dove beauty (2016) showed that 60% agreed that society expects women to enhance their physical attractiveness and a staggering 75% wished that media portrayed women in more diverse sizes. When young adults attempt to lose weight by unnatural practices, they have no idea of the severe harm they’re doing to their

The practice of bulimia can cause both long and short term health effects. It can cause damage in almost every system in the body including the cardiovascular, digestive, excretory, skeletal, reproductive, and nervous system. Even from a couple of episodes short-term effects are prevalent with unhealthy weight gain or loss, broken blood vessels in the eyes, puffy or swollen cheeks and painful salivary glands, dehydration, constipation, diarrhea, abdominal bloating, cramps, fatigue, sleep problems and decreased self-esteem (Quick Care, 2015). Persisting to binge and purge, victims could be suffering from long term effects in all dimensions of health. Through becoming very isolated due to the disorder, and generally developing other issues such as serious self-loathing, depression and anxiety. The illness extremely effects ones emotional and social health. Luckily there are specialists able to help control the