None of us are “that girl” (and that’s okay) by Mara Logan TW: Eating disorders and mental health challenges. Trapped in the Algorithm Our generation is good at mental health. More than that, we are self-care experts: girlboss, gaslight, gatekeep, seven-step skincare routine. Repeat. We are experts at the illusionary. “Who doesn’t fetishize being a glamorous, productive, perfect version of themselves?” journalist Ruchira Sharma asks. And who doesn’t? I certainly did. I graduated highschool in May of 2019, and in the summer months that followed, I fell into the algorithm of the Instagram explore page. For years I’d wavered on the brink of the chasm— diet propaganda posts popping up here and there on my feed—but this time I went over the edge. I saved a meal prep post, liked an influencer’s photo, and soon my explore page was inundated with thinspo content showing the calorie counts on different-sized bowls of carrots. Social media in that form was a critical part of pushing me to develop bulimia and orthorexia. The first time I purged, I told myself that this was my wakeup call. I realized I had pushed myself (my body) too far; I took a step back. The calorie counting, Fitbit obsession, and diet account worship didn’t stop all at once, but I became more conscious of “bad” behaviors. When I saw calorie counts and workout videos displayed shamelessly on my explore page, I intentionally avoided them, desperately trying to cultivate a social media experience that didn’t fuel my eating disorder. A month later, in September of 2019, I began my first month of college. For the better part of a year I purged “only” occasionally; I told myself I was okay. And then COVID. The pandemic hit and I was trapped in my
house, my room, with only my phone and social media. But my Instagram explore page looked different, and I believed I had outsmarted my disease. Still, my mindset, my self image, how I defined my worth—that was all the same as it had been six months earlier. My disease hadn’t disappeared; it had just adapted. I started spending hours each day on social media—sometimes Instagram, but mostly Pinterest. I created board after board depicting the ideal that I sought. Not just images of thin bodies, but a life and lifestyle that I imagined was perfect but could only be lived by people who looked like that. It was at this point that my bulimia reached its peak. I was isolated by the pandemic and my own behavior, and I convinced myself that I would come out of this experience new, different, and better. I see my journey through my eating disorder as a microcosm of the larger battle between our generation, social media, and mental health.
It’s not a routine, it’s a lifestyle When editing this article, one of my friends pointed out something to me—the language I used when talking about my disease inherently placed blame upon me. I made Pinterest boards. I consumed content. I purged, again and again. It’s true, these are all actions that I took. But this is also the lie that social media tells us. It is the excuse frequently used by companies like Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest when they are forced to defend themselves against horrifying statistics like the one published in WSJ’s recent whistleblower piece1: “thirtytwo percent of teen girls said that when they felt bad about their bodies, Instagram made them feel worse.” The line from social companies again and again is that “consumers can tailor their own content”, but this ignores the reality of these platforms’ algorithms and the reality of consumers’ limited agency.
1 Wells, G., Horwitz, J., & Seetharaman, D. (2021, September 14). Facebook knows Instagram is toxic for teen girls, company documents show. The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved November 21, 2021, from https://www.wsj.com/articles/ facebook-knows-instagram-is-toxic-for-teen-girls-company-documents-show-11631620739?mod=article_inline.
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