| It affects both sexes. In terms of gender norms, people are quick to point out the effect it has on girls (the societal gender construct, not necessarily the sex) because they apply stereotypes of caring deeply about their looks and comparing themselves to other girls. Western society places a lot of importance on looks for girls and women. Meanwhile, boys struggle just the same, society just doesn't really accept vanity in teen boys the same way they do teen girls. Being a teen is very rough these days in terms of mental health, and this applies to all genders and sexes. We had IRC, BBS et al in the '90s, they weren't designed to be addictive. It's such a different landscape these days for so many reasons. Models were airbrushed, then models started being Photoshopped, that affected how people felt too. It isn't necessarily a problem unique to social media. Imagine reading a magazine full of ads and perfectly good-looking people almost every waking hour as a teen. You're going to end up very unhappy if none of what you're seeing looks like you. This is why representation is important, but when it's reduced to a box-ticking exercise then we have a problem, albeit a different one. Teen suicide has been a problem for a long while though, even pre-internet. MySpace was interesting because you saw average looking people generally instead of algorithmic focus on the best x. Not saying MySpace was healthy though, the "number of friends" popularity contest and hoping to be in someone's "top y friends" was miserable. |
In 2018 "obesity prevalence was [...] 21.2% among 12- to 19-year-olds." [1] according to the CDC. That's one out of 5 being obese, not just overweight. And it has more than tripled since the 70's [2]. I have to wonder if it's related. A lot of teenagers are bombarded with images of their peers' perfectly healthy bodies that, quite simply, won't match what they see in the mirror. The solution? Ban mirrors.
[0] https://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/childhood.html
[1] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hestat/obesity_child_15_16/obe...