Body Dysmorphia and How it Relates to Social Media

Body dysmorphia is defined as a mental health disorder in which the person can’t stop thinking about how their body is perceived, often focusing on one or more flaws that appear minor or invisible to others. It shares many symptoms with other eating disorders and OCD. 

Body dysmorphia, like many mental health or eating disorders, is easily hidden from friends and family. What I’ve noticed from my own struggle with it is that it’s incredibly internalized. The comments a person makes about their body don’t often come out in public. This is crucial because self-talk is a key part of body dysmorphia. As mentioned before, it does overlap with eating disorders, which can lead to extreme changes in diets. But much of body dysmorphia persists because no one hears those comments but the person themself—and those who do hear them rarely hear it as frequently as the person themself.

So how does social media play into this issue? Although social media can feel so public and, at times, intrusive, it is also arguably the most private thing we do. We scroll through our endless feed alone, and because of how we curate our timelines, no one really sees exactly what we see. I believe the “private” nature or use of social media can increase the frequency of negative thoughts relating to body image because those who struggle with body dysmorphia do so in a private way as well. I’m not saying that any social media use can cause body dysmorphia, but with the amount of content we absorb daily, it’s not unlikely that said content can change our opinions about ourselves. 

It isn’t new information that social media affects how we feel. What’s scary about its particular influence on body image is that pictures posted online are generally edited. Sometimes, very heavily edited. Whether it be filters or Facetune, it’s hard to know what’s real. And even those subconsciously aware that social media showcases everyone’s “best moments,” it’s hard to be consciously thinking that about every post you see. 

I’m not here to shame people who post a lot of pictures of themselves or their body—they aren’t causing harm. Self-love and body positivity should be celebrated and accepted online. But specific features of social media, such as shareability to a wide audience and distortion of images, make it difficult to escape the question: “Is how I look enough?” And for those with body dysmorphia, this question rings louder and louder all the time.

A few weeks ago, I overheard a conversation between two friends of mine. One had just taken a picture and kept going back to how she looked in the photo, unfortunately, nit-picking parts of her appearance and talking down to herself. My other friend then said, “why are you so mean to yourself?” Maybe not the ideal way to ask such a question, but the realization on her face was the same one I’d had a couple of years ago. The center of body dysmorphia isn’t about how you look but about how you talk to yourself. 

I know it’s easier said than done but with any eating disorder, no end goal exists. It seems like it will stop once you get skinny, once you lose those pounds, once someone notices. But, especially with body dysmorphia, the perfect body that you’re looking for is unattainable because it doesn’t exist. Eating disorders give a person control over what they eat and how they look when everything else is chaos. But there’s a point when you begin to lose control over how you feel. Quite frankly, you feel nothing most of the time. And you lose control over how you treat yourself and allow yourself to become subject to others opinions on your body. All of this sucks because it doesn’t make any sense!

How can you make these feelings go away without at least trying to change? And with social media, that pressure to change is so visible and ever-present. My advice, or at least my starting point, is to change how you talk to yourself and how you compare yourself to others. Be kind to yourself, give yourself time to grow and feel, and remember that you don’t have to be someone else’s idea of perfect. It’s these small internal changes that can lead to a big difference. 

If you or someone you know is struggling with an eating disorder, visit https://www.nationaleatingdisorders.org/help-support for more information.