An Apple a Day

An Apple a Day

Teenagers struggle with food relationships in a new age of technology

By Megan Benz, Editor-In-Chief and Meah Matherne, Ads Editor/Reporter

The Social Shackles Open Instagram. Scroll, scroll, scroll. That girl is so skinny. Scroll. He is so ripped. Scroll. Close out of the app. Look in the mirror. Realize that your body looks nothing like the people you see constantly flashing across your screen. Your body isn’t quite as small or muscular or as curvy or skinny. You quickly come to believe that bodies are supposed to be impossibly perfect looking and that yours just does not measure up.

This is not an uncommon thought process for many teens as they interact on social media sites. According to the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (AACAP), 90 percent of teens are active social media users. As they scroll, they are able to peer into the seemingly perfect lives of others with just a few clicks.

However, with easier access comes greater risk to users’ mental and physical health. The constant engagement exposes teens to the lavish lifestyles and habits of hundreds of celebrities and “influencers.” Many online personalities lead lives marked by extremes: constant travel and little work, decadent meals and punishing workout schedules.

In addition to leading unrealistic lifes, social media stars often have unattainably perfect bodies, thanks to filters and editing apps. As teenagers interact with these profiles, many begin to think that extreme proportions and supernaturally smooth skin are the norm.

“My friends would tell me I was beautiful, and that made me feel good,” Caroline Sneed* said. “Social media only showed pictures of girls that were super edited. At some point, you get so used to seeing their over edited photos that you don’t remember what a real body should look like.”

A 2019 survey by Censuswide found that nearly 50 percent of social media users edit their photos before posting them. Celebrities like the Kardashians have often been called out for editing their photos, and recently, Gigi Hadid was bashed for photoshopping childhood pictures of herself in order to appear more like her current self.

Many online influencers also have access to diet and exercise resources, as well as plastic surgery. In response to increasingly superficial beauty standards, the American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS) recorded nearly 250,000 more plastic surgeries performed in 2018 than in 2017. That same year, the phrase “Snapchat Dysmorphia” was coined due to the growing number of young adults who request plastic surgery to make their faces and bodies look more like their filtered Instagram or Snapchat photos.

“Social media sets a beauty standard,” Sofia Smith* said. “ When my friends put themselves down or use methods to lose weight, I feel guilty about not doing anything to be skinnier. I also feel like the ideal body type is constantly changing, and I can’t keep up.” The Eating Epidemic Many teens struggle to find balance between academic pressures, societal expectations and having fun. Although this may seem a minor inconvenience to an outsider, these stressors along with the feeling of not having control can easily fuel dangerous, and possibly lethal relationships. That is, food relationships. While often embellished and even sometimes romanticized on social media, eating disorders (EDs) come in all forms and hide behind a common mask: control. “I met a friend in group therapy who had an eating disorder,” Cameron Johnson said.* “She talked about how it was like a claw in her mind and thoughts of not eating were obsessive and overtook her life.” The need for control over one’s life is not a new nor foreign concept. When someone has control of their life, they are usually perceived as organized, polished and successful in the most judgeful of eyes: society’s. While praised, this trait, if left unchecked, can often begin consuming one’s everyday life.

By constantly striving for the perfect body, grades or college admittance, students often overexert themselves and can fall into the murky, deceptive waters of EDs. According to the National Eating Disorders Association, “Eating disorders are not a choice. They commonly co-occur with other mental health conditions like major depression, anxiety, social phobia and obsessive-compulsive disorder.” Commonly overlooked in the eating disorder conversations are men. Put on the back burner because of stigmas and double standards around male mental health, men often face harsher effects of eating disorders because of late diagnosis. According to the American Addiction centers, about 25 percent of those diagnosed with an eating disorder are male.

Male EDs are found primarily in male athletes who compete in sports that place repetitive and forceful stress on their bodies, leading athletes to overwork and over exert their bodies, sometimes with irreversible effects. While the acts of restriction, binging or purging are all decisions, they are less conscious and more pre-wired, making these conditions devastating to people affected by ED and deceitful to outsiders who believe it is simply a deliberate choice.

“I knew a friend that was diagnosed with bulimia and because of that, I frequently stopped eating around her,” Jasmine Le* said. “I skip meals a lot now because I had unconsciously trained myself not to eat around my friend.” Abstract Competition “Forgetting to eat,” skipping meals, small caloric sacrifices throughout the day seem like a small price to pay for the sake of an “ideal” body for some. What comes as a surprise to many, though, is that this is just one form of restriction associated with EDs. Although skipping meals is the most traditional form of restriction, commonly associated with teenage girls, restriction affects both boys and girls in a variety of ways. Whether it is through the practice of eating exclusively “clean” or “healthy” foods or obsessively exercising to lose weight or gain muscle, these are not as commonly discussed forms of restriction associated with EDs according to BC Children’s Hospital. These obsessive habits, while fueled by feeling out of control or comparison to others, are often honed excessively in high school, collegiate and professional sports. “For some sports, you have to be in a different shape than for others,” Roger Blake* said. Standards for sports contradict and confuse athletes who play multiple sports. While in dance class girls are told to have “long, lean lines,” but when compared to a similar fine art, gymnastics, the standards change. As a gymnast, you must be strong, short, and agile. The same contradicting standards apply for boys. They are often told to “bulk up” for football season to be the biggest they can on the line, only to be told two months later to slim down and work on muscle toning for baseball season. While athletes are praised for their physique and dedication to being physically fit, the standards set in each sport can be just as detrimental to student athletes as social media can be.

“Seeing athletes I aspire to be online makes me feel like my body isn’t as good as it could be and that makes me push myself harder,” Clayton Kelly* said.

While the importance of breakfast has been repeatedly ingrained in the minds of elementary school students through dancing veggies and breakfast cartoons, these efforts may have been encouraged in vain. A Kellogg’s survey found that only 64 percent of American teens eat breakfast every morning. Many also consistently skip other meals due to their busy schedules or stress.

For growing teens, skipping meals can create considerable challenges in maintaining energy throughout the day. In order to function, bodies need the energy and nutrients food provides to both the body and the brain.

Opposite to its intended purpose, skipping meals can actually increase the chance of obesity. Essentially, people who often skip meals have a higher likelihood of obesity than those that don’t skip meals. Deciding to not eat breakfast, lunch, or dinner doesn’t mean that the body will just stop craving energy. Skipping meals is statistically proven to increase the chances of binge eating later in the day to make up for skipped meals. Stuck with Food Everyone will have a relationship with food for their entire life. It is essential to one’s mental and physical well being. Humans must eat. Eating habits learned early in life and especially with teens will effect the rest of a person’s life. For some, their relationship with food is one they struggle with for a lifetime.

In today’s tech-obsessed world, teens are bombarded with direct–and not so direct–messages about how they “supposed” to look. The constant pressure teens face to look and do things in a certain way makes a healthy relationship with food immensely challenging. Because of social media’s influence on body standards, teens are almost conditioned to doubt every bite.

It is important to understand that while eating healthy and working out is a positive thing, everything must be done in moderation to be sustainable. Teens’ bodies are constantly changing. Weight fluctuates not because of the occasional “cheat meal” or indulgent dessert but because of a multitude of other, healthy, normal body functions.

“I started eating the correct amount of calories I need to function in a day because I thought it would benefit my mental health, and it did,” Julia Wallace* said.

What each person’s body needs and is capable of is as unique as the person himself.

“I wish everyone knew how much what we put in our bodies impacts our health, energy levels, sleep, skin, emotional health and more,” MD Anderson nutritionist, Lindsey Wohlford, said. “Every time we eat is an opportunity to care for ourselves.” If you are struggling with an eating disorder or other types of body dysmorphia, please reach out to a school wellness counselor or another trusted individual.