Hello, I am Dr. Elizabeth Ventura, and during this video I will be talking about how social media can affect body image in adolescents and young adults.

Social media can be both positive and negative in helping you connect with friends and family. While it helps us to stay connected with people we no longer see, it can drive insecurity as people often compare themselves to others.

I know you may struggle with the way others are portrayed on social media. I know that it can create a really empty feeling of missing out, or even a worthless feeling as you compare yourself to others and feel you aren’t good enough. Underneath all this, is such an unbearable level of anxiety, it feels hard to endure.

When you see the post of the person with the “perfect” body, you don’t automatically think that it was filtered, you may just envy their body and feel ashamed of yours. When you feel like this, your brain sends messages that you just don’t measure up, and this fear or anxiety can drive you to go to great lengths to control something when everything else feels really out of control.

For adolescents and young adults that suffer with body image issues, anxiety can increase these worries to such unbearable levels, it can feel really hard to manage. You may have thoughts about controlling your weight, shape, and / or overall appearance. You may overeat, because in those moments of overeating, there are moments of happiness…The food tastes good, right? And when you are feeling so sad and anxious, being distracted from that emotion, even for a few moments, feels good…..until it doesn’t anymore and the feelings of sadness and anxiety come back.

You may restrict food, or even over exercise to exert some sense of control. If you do all those things “perfect”, then you will be perfect right? You try to control the food and the exercise, because you can not control anything else happening around you. If you can control all of that, you will be the “perfect” way you want to be… the only problem is “perfect” never ends up being good enough, and it always changes! 

Helping reduce anxiety about body image may first start with reducing exposure to social media posts. This takes some self – monitoring that can be hard to do! If you experience that your normal routine is off, or you are feeling more isolated, and you are spending more time than you normally would on social media comparing yourself to others, it may be time to take control in a healthier way! Talk to a trusted provider about your body image and how you may notice that it seems to be getting worse while you are struggling with feelings of anxiety or sadness. This may be a good time to start a routine that gets you back on a schedule for sleeping, eating, and moving in a healthy and reasonable way. Try to limit the time that you spend on social media so that you are not overwhelmed by images that can trigger insecurities when you are already struggling.

This is one of those times that you really want to write down some of your thoughts and emotions so that you can read them the next day to see what may be a rational, healthy thought, (“Its okay that I didn’t exercise today, I was excited to lay at the pool and relax” ) versus one that is driven by anxiety, (“You should have swam several laps before you left the pool, you were just lazy”). When you allow yourself to be driven by these negative thoughts, you will fall into a pattern of feeling like you are never enough, and become overly critical.

If you find yourself feeling pre-occupied with your body image in an unhealthy way, comparing yourself to others in ways that causes emotional distress, or being overly critical of your body or appearance please take the time to reach out and discuss your feelings with a trusted provider.

Thank you for watching.