Adolescent Health and Suicide

Social media plays a negative role in the way we look at our bodies or the way others look at them. When people look at their bodies and are ashamed of them they will usually photoshop their pictures to try and make their bodies perfect. The National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders (ANAD) discovered that 30 million people of all ages have or are suffering from an eating disorder in the United States. They are doing this to try and have the perfect body in their mind and what they think the guys will like. This is leading to a death every 62 minutes. The Journal of Adolescent Health published a study that proved that negative body imaging was leading to some young women to suicide. France is creating a new law to try and get rid of the public health issue.

The issue is that 600,000 people are suffering from eating disorders. The law is saying that if an image or photo was altered to make a model look skinnier, have a bigger butt, or to have abs needs to be labeled as so. Following France, Getty Images, one of the largest photo agencies in the United States banned people from sending in pictures that have been altered to make the model look smaller or bigger in any way. The child and adolescent psychiatrist Gayani DeSilvia M.D. said, “Anytime people internalize an impossible-to-attain goal, it leads to feeling inadequate and developing poor self-esteem.” Today's society is full of unreal expectations of what people’s bodies are supposed to look like. Dr. Lynn Anderson says, “We should be promoting health and fitness instead of skin and bones as the ideal.

” Some boys and men want to hold women to these “perfect body” standards by seeing what they see on social media. These boys and men looking for a woman with these standards are looking for a unicorn, they don’t exist. Jennifer L. Derenne, M.D. and Eugene V. Beresin, M.D. M.A. worked on a study that explored how our idea of beauty has historically been formed by social context and difficult to achieve. They both suggested for parents to limit the social media their child sees and encourage them to do more physical activity instead and to participate in other activities to boost their self-esteem. Some of the social media can be avoided and some you just can’t avoid. You can choose what tv shows you watch and which magazines you read. You can’t really avoid the ads you see posted around your area. Someday everyone will be celebrating women of all shapes and sizes.

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