Eating Disorders and Social Media: Marcela Rojas' Findings

The author Marcela Rojas from The Journal News (Westchester County, NY), shared thoughts on the topic of eating disorders and direct correlation they have with social media. Eating disorders such has anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa have unfortunately become more common in the American culture. Over the years, eating disorders in youth and middle age individuals has been increasing and becoming a more pressing problem due to the internet’s effortless ability to provide access to self-destructive images, tips, tricks and “online discussion forums where people compared weights, binged together, and helped one another avoid eating” (Rojas, 2014).

Claire Mysko, the head of youth outreach for the National Eating Disorders Association (NEDA), explained that “Social media amplifies behaviors associated with eating disorders — obsessions, comparisons and competition — with a constant stream of imagery and camaraderie»building, and how easy it is to seek and gain approval” (Rojas). As expected, there are very alarming results to the media’s unhealthy ideals.

In a 10 year period, the number of hospitalizations from eating disorders increased by 24 percent.

Luckily, with the persistent work of NEDA, positive dialogue and “messages of hope and recovery” that are shared on social media has been generating much needed improvement in the culture As an anthropologist, I would recognize the current issue with anorexia and bulimia in the United States ofAmerica as an example of a culturerspecific syndrome. 1 know that a culture»specific syndrome is a health problem with a set of symptoms associated with a particular culture. This problem with eating disorders as risen up in America because every day the majority of people are subjected to the media‘s beliefs about body image by seeing or hearing about it through the phone, computer, television and radio.

Get quality help now

Sweet V

Verified

Proficient in: Eating Disorder

4.9 (984)

“ Ok, let me say I’m extremely satisfy with the result while it was a last minute thing. I really enjoy the effort put in. ”

+84 relevant experts are online

Hire writer

In this article, insight is provided by an individual who suffered from an eating disorder, a therapist, the head of youth outreach for the National Eating Disorders Association (NEDA) and the founder and the head of Rockland Jewish Family Services in New York City.

I believe it would be beneficial to add comments from a family member of an individual who has/had an eating disorder to ensure a very wide range of people’s thoughts on the topic, Applying the use of community healing Lhrough the participation in support groups that value positive and healthy body ideals could help people overcome this illness With the presence of social media growing, it has also made the number of eating disorders grow. Americans are bombarded with other people’s opinions about body ideals all of the time and they have access to self-harming sites on the internet which promote negative thoughts and behaviors. By removing the harmful content online and proving assistance through support groups, I believe that the problem with eating disorders in the American culture can decrease.