First of all, let’s take a look at “What is an eating disorder?”
What are Eating Disorders?
It is a serious medical condition involving severe and often disturbances in eating behaviors and it’s mostly associated with your mental state and emotions.
Causes and Treatments
With our current understanding, there are a lot of factors that cause eating disorders. Such as, biological, psychological and social factors which is our main topic with this writing.
For treatment, early identification is huge since you can treat it better without it getting worse. After recognizing your disorder you need to see a professional. With medical care, physical and emotional recovery is possible.
Types of Eating Disorders
Anorexia Nervosa, Bulimia Nervosa, Diabulimia, Binge Eating Disorder, Avoidant Restrictive Food Intake Disorder (ARFID), Pica, Rumination Disorder, Other Specified Feeding and Eating Disorder.
The most common one of them is; Anorexia Nervosa. Basically, it’s limiting how much food you can eat. It’s often because of an intense fear of gaining weight. It’s a complex condition that has mental, behavioral, and physical symptoms. Treatment for Anorexia Nervosa is essential due to its life-threatening complications.
The most dangerous one of them is; Diabulimia. It is an eating disorder in which someone with Type-1 diabetes withholds insulin to lose weight. It can be life-threatening. People with diabulimia may have other disordered eating behaviors, like purging. Or they may only limit insulin dosages and otherwise have healthy eating patterns.
Now to our main topic,
Eating Disorders Caused by Beauty Standards Online
It is a lot more common than what we expect it to be. Since it can happen between any age and any platform. Basically, how can you gain a disorder while you’re just scrolling through your phone? Here’s how. When you see someone who is unrealistically beautiful or handsome and when you look at yourself you feel insufficient, not good looking enough. Of course, that doesn’t happen to everyone but as I said, it happens a lot more than what we think. There’s even more. You can even get depressed while just scrolling. When you see someone who has more than what you have, who looks better than you do. Some of us can’t control it and we get jealous. And that is the reason why we get eating disorders caused by social media.
And now, let’s talk about “beauty standards”
What is Beauty Standard
Beauty standards are societal norms that define what is considered attractive or desirable in appearance, varying significantly across cultures and historical periods.
And if we talk about it being “online” we can pretty much assume what it means. For example let’s say there is a boy and he wants to share himself online because he doesn’t think much of it. If the boy does not suit the “beauty standards” online, he will get bullied. Some people will even report him and try to get his account canceled just because that boy doesn’t meet his “standards” and yes, there’s a lot of people who deal with that kind of stuff.
When this sort of thing happens, there is a huge chance that the boy will get some mental damage, it can be anxiety, lack of self-confidence, eating disorders and even worse things that I don’t feel like putting in this writing.
In Conclusion
If eating disorders get ignored, it can be lethal very quickly. It is a huge problem in our day since social media is all over and the age restrictions do not work, people with sensitive mentalities can easily get hurt by other users. We all need to acknowledge the truth and seek out for them, because if we don’t, no one will. It’s not a joke, it’s a serious matter, at least that’s how we need to see them. It’s not just eating disorders, you can develop many other mental issues just from your screen. You may think it’s nothing but it’s happening way more than you think.
Written By: M. Can TARAKÇI
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