Social media triggers children to dislike their own bodies, says study

Three out of four children as young as 12 dislike their bodies and are embarrassed by the way they look, increasing to eight in 10 young people aged 18 to 21.

Nearly half of all children and young people aged from 12 to 21 questioned said they have become withdrawn, started exercising excessively, stopped socialising completely or self-harmed because they are regularly bullied or trolled online about their physical appearance.

Four in 10 said they are in mental health distress, with almost one in five experiencing body image issues and 14% experiencing eating difficulties, such as extreme restrictive eating, binge eating and purging or vomiting. Of those in need of support, just one in ten young people were receiving treatment.

The findings come from a new survey of 1,024 children and young people aged 12 to 21 years old by stem4, the youth mental health charity. Based on the findings, the charity says that urgent action is needed.

Those questioned admitted they continued to access apps despite concerns that their mental health was being damaged by the online content pushed at them by social media algorithms: a statistic rising from 54% of 12-14-year-olds to 60% of 15-17-year-olds and 71% of 18-21-year-olds.

Despite that, 95% of those questioned said they felt helpless when it came to quitting their online habit. They also admitted that they are four times more likely to turn to social media apps than to talk to friends and family when seeking to overcome negative feelings or low self-worth about their bodies.

Since the pandemic, demand for NHS child and adolescent eating disorder services increased by two-thirds, with 10,000 young people starting treatment between April and December 2021. Yet levels of provision are such that treatment is only available to those in the most serious need.

At the time a spokesperson for TikTok, which is owned by the Chinese firm ByteDance and has more than one billion users worldwide, said the CCDH study did not reflect the experience or viewing habits of real-life users of the app.