Social Media and Youth Body Image: What To Know and What To Do

00:00:12 – Introductions by Executive Director of Children and Screens Kris Perry

00:02:03 – Moderator Elise Hu introduces the topic of youth body image and digital media.

00:05:36 – Jasmine Fardouly gives an overview of how body image develops and its intersection with social media.

00:14:38 – Chelly Maes discusses how specific features of social media like filters and influencers relate to appearance-focused interactions among adolescents.

00:23:02 – Moderator follow-up: What kinds of conversations should parents be having with their kids to encourage “media literacy”? What should our kids understand about the media?

00:27:41 – Jennifer Mills on body comparison, clinical issues associated with body image, and what to look out for in young people.

00:39:44 – Moderator follow-up: What have you seen in terms of incidence of eating disorders and prevalence over the last 30 years?

00:43:21 – Elizabeth A. Daniels on how we define and cultivate positive body image.

00:53:22 – Moderator follow-up: Where do you stand on limiting access to social media completely (e.g. social media bans)?

00:55:09 – The panel addresses questions from the audience.

00:55:18 – Q&A: How does adults’ behavior impact children?

00:56:56 – Q&A: How can parents confront the systematic nature of appearance-based social media?

00:59:20 – Q&A: How can I help my teen daughter when I feel like the damage from social media is already done?

01:01:58 – Q&A: How can we be intentional in how we promote body positivity?

01:04:23 – Q&A: How does puberty and gender identity intersect with body image?

01:06:00 – Q&A: What can we do to help young children develop healthy body image, starting from an early age?

01:08:11 – Q&A: What are the effects of AI-generated images and filters on body image?

01:12:39 – Q&A: How does the rise of weight loss drugs contribute to beauty ideals?

01:15:26 – Q&A: Social media has pros and cons; how can individuals navigate this duality in their own feeds?

01:20:02 – Q&A: What’s the line between healthy and toxic content?

01:23:12 – Wrap-up with Children and Screens’ Executive Director Kris Perry.

[Kris Perry]: Good afternoon and welcome to the first #AsktheExperts webinar of 2026, “Social Media and Youth Body Image: What to Know and What to do.” I’m Kris Perry, Executive Director of Children and Screens. We’re so glad you could join us today. Today’s conversation focuses on an issue many parents, caregivers, educators, and professionals are grappling with, how social media trends, influencers, and idealized body images shape the way children and teens see their bodies, and what adults can do to help. From filters and photo editing, to influencer culture and viral trends, today’s digital environment can quietly, but powerfully shape young people’s self-image. While some online spaces can promote creativity and connection, others may fuel competition, body dissatisfaction, and unhealthy behaviors. Understanding how body image develops, how digital media fits into that process, and where adults can intervene constructively is essential. Now let’s get started, I’d like to introduce you to today’s moderator, Elise Hu. Elise Hu is a Los Angeles-based journalist, podcast host, and media entrepreneur. She hosts “TED Talks Daily,” and is the author of Flawless: Lessons and Looks and Culture from the K-Beauty Capital, an award-winning book exploring beauty standards, media, and culture. A former NPR international correspondent and regular voice on “Morning Edition,” and “All Things Considered,” she has reported from more than a dozen countries and opened NPR’s first-ever Seoul Bureau. She is a Gracie Award winner, co-founder of the podcast company “Reasonable Volume,” and a mother of three daughters. Welcome, Elise. 

[Elise Hu]: Thank you so much, Kris, and thank you all for being here. Thank you to Children and Screens, and the Institute of Digital Media and Child Development for convening all of this. This is such a vitally important conversation, and as you heard, I am a mother of three girls, their ages 10, 8, and I have a teenager now, 13, so you can bet this is on my mind as much as a parent as it is as a journalist. I lately, or just last year, started hosting a parenting podcast from the children’s book publisher, “A Kids Co.,” and the show is called “Raising Us.” Raising Us focuses on how to have all sorts of thorny conversations with our kids about digital, or difficult topics. And at that show, the intersection of screens, gaming, and social media is really the most popular and asked for topic area where we get questions about, from parents. So, we are so fortunate today to be learning the latest research and understanding and insight on the intersection of social media and youth body image. We’re also going to be getting some actionable guidance and insight on how to best navigate this rather fast changing terrain. Even 15 years ago, when I was covering the intersection of technology and culture, that was still during the time where social media was considered connective and CEOs were talking about how it was going to connect and make the world a better place, and now we have seen a real shadow side to all of that. And as Kris talked about at the start, whether it is kind of chasing those likes, and chasing those reposts, or the way that filters have kind of changed our vision of an idealized self, or changed our beauty standards into becoming more unrealistic, and these days, more AI-generated, social media use has really influenced how youth perceive themselves, how they compare themselves to others. This can be a very complex topic, and so I’m so glad that we have some of the leading researchers in the field and a clinician, to answer the question, “What can parents and caregivers do to help our children and adolescents develop and foster healthy body image, and what healthy body image looks like in the first place?” I’m so excited to be with a panel of some of the leading researchers in this field. Each expert is going to give a quick slideshow presentation of their insights. I might ask a quick question after that, and after we get through all of the panelists, we’re going to open up the webinar to your questions, and you can feel free to continue to submit questions along the way. Let’s start now with Dr. Jasmine Fardouly, who is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Psychology at the University of Sydney. She leads a program there investigating positive and negative social media content for users’ body image and mental health. She holds a Sydney Horizon Fellowship on improving social media for users body image through interventions among individuals, influencers, and policies. Dr. Fardouly, welcome. 

[Dr. Jasmine Fardouly]: Thank you, I’m excited to be here. And thank you for inviting me to be part of this webinar.

[Elise Hu]: Absolutely. We can’t wait to have you get started and kick us off.

[Dr. Jasmine Fardouly]: Great. So, today I’ve been asked to provide a brief overview of what body image is, how it can develop, and how it relates to social media. So, body image is a person’s perceptions, thoughts, and feelings related to their physical appearance. And body dissatisfaction is one aspect of body image, and it relates to feeling unhappy with your physical appearance, or certain aspects of the way that you look. And body dissatisfaction is probably what a lot of people think of when they think of the term, when they hear the term body image. Now, body dissatisfaction is widespread among different cultures, ages, genders, and body shapes and sizes. Body dissatisfaction, the prevalence can really vary depending on what study that you look at, but generally research suggests that it’s at least normative. So, at least half of young people are unhappy with their way that they look, with some studies suggesting that up to 90% of young people report at least some dissatisfaction with their physical appearance. You know, body dissatisfaction can develop early, research suggests that girls from the age of six can report a desire to be thinner, and report dieting in order to lose weight. And this is, concerning, because body dissatisfaction is an important fit predictor for a whole host of negative physical and mental health outcomes. So, people who are more unhappy with their bodies, increase risk of eating disorders, depression, and anxiety. People who are unhappy with their bodies also often report poorer quality of life. And young people can also have poorer academic performance and be less likely to assert their opinion if they’re more unhappy with their appearance. And for all of these reasons, researchers and others have been arguing that body dissatisfaction is a global public health concern, and something that we should be trying to address and reduce in order to improve young people’s lives. Now, when we think about sociocultural factors that can influence body dissatisfaction, there were kind of two messages that often get promoted within societies that can impact body image. And one of them is the fact that there are very, usually within societies there’s one look that’s promoted as being ideal and attractive for women, and one look that’s promoted as being attractive for men. And we’re all born in bodies of different shapes, sizes, and colors, we’re all unique. And so, if we’re all trying to look the same way, then it’s going to be unattainable for most people. And another factor that is important to consider is that in many societies, from a young age, there’s this message that it’s very important to match the beauty ideals in order to be successful and happy. And when we look at sociocultural models within the body image literature, the tripartite model of body image is probably the most widely examined theory, and it also has a lot of evidence kind of supporting it. And what this model is suggesting is that these kind of messages around appearance and beauty ideals, can lead to body dissatisfaction. If young people, when young people, take them on for themselves, when people internalize these ideals and see them as something they want to strive towards, and when people compare themselves, their own physical appearance, the appearance of others who match these ideals and judge themselves to be less attractive. So, this internalization and these negative comparisons can fuel body dissatisfaction. This model also suggests that there are different influences of these sociocultural pressures. So, families are an important influence of body image, and these appearance based messages. Parents, for example, can impact body image by modeling negative body image to their children. So, if children hear their parents talk negatively about their own appearance or be anxious about the way that they look, then that can be taken on passively by children. Families can also influence body image by making direct comments about their children’s physical appearance, or about what they’re eating, or that they exercise. Peers are really important influences as well, with regard to conversations that they may be having, and they can be important comparison targets. And media as well, so, this model was originally created before social media was around, but it’s similar in traditional media and social media in that there are a lot of people who match beauty ideals that are seen within these environments, and they provide opportunities for comparisons. And these media also often have advertisements that suggest that you need to buy certain products, or go on certain diets, or spend your money and invest effort in order to match these beauty ideals. So, this theory is still relevant to social media. Some people argue that social media can even sit across all of these sociocultural influences. And part of the reason that social media can be harmful for body image is because it provides a lot of opportunities for people to compare their appearance to others who match beauty ideals, and that can lead to internalization as well. Also, there are functions and features within social media that Chelly will talk about a little bit more, that may actually prioritize the presentation of people’s bodies who match ideals. And so, it’s really important for us to think about that as well. Now, there are also other theories that have, that are more specific to body image. So there’s one theory, that was proposed by Choukas-Bradley and colleagues, which is specific to adolescent girls, but I think is relevant to all young people, to some extent, that suggests that the adolescent period could be a really vulnerable period for body image and social media and how they interact. And these are arguing that there are certain sociocultural factors that increase the importance of physical appearance for young girls. And that there are features within social media, such as the highly visual nature of very popular platforms like TikTok and Instagram, and the quantifiable feedback that these platforms allow through likes and comments, that can also promote the importance of physical appearance. And the adolescent period is also, has a lot of developmental changes around pubertal development, like people’s bodies change, and that can create an increased focus and dissatisfaction with your appearance. And the increase of peers, and the importance of peers and peer acceptance. So, there’s a lot of things that happen in this adolescent time that can potentially heighten these effects. And this model suggests that there are also experiences within social media that heighten focus on your own appearance, when people have profiles within these platforms, they’re potentially wanting to present the most attractive version of their appearance and are concerned about the feedback that they receive on their posts, and also viewing other people’s appearances and their idealized self presentations as well, and these can all impact body image and mental health. Now, when it comes to social media and body image, researchers looking at just general time spent on social media often find quite weak and inconsistent effects. Where we see more strong effects, and the stronger evidence, is when we look at what people are doing, and what people see on social media. So, you know, research is suggesting that when people see these idealized physical appearances, that it can impact negatively on body image. But, also there’s content within social media that challenges these narrow beauty ideals and that promotes the acceptance of diverse physical appearances. And our research suggests that that can actually improve body image. So, I think, there are many functions and features within these platforms that can heighten harm, but there’s also content that can promote, that can be beneficial. So, I think it’s important to kind of consider these diverse effects and the real complexity of the relationship between social media and body image. And Chelly is going to talk more about these functions and features next.

[Elise Hu]: Thank you for really laying the groundwork for us there. Our next speaker, as Dr. Fardouly mentioned, is Dr. Chelly Maes. She is an Assistant Professor at the University of Brussels in the Department of Communication and Information Sciences. Her research examines how digital media experiences relate to key developmental tasks, including body image, sexuality, identity development, and mental health, drawing on theoretical perspectives from communication science and developmental psychology. She has published extensively in Q1 ranked international journals, authored book chapters, and presented her work more than 30 times at major international conferences. Professor Maes is also a frequent speaker at academic and public events, and regularly contributes to the public discourse through media appearances. Dr. Maes, take it away.

[Dr. Chelly Maes]; Yes, thank you so much for the introduction. I will zoom in some research we conducted, in which we specifically paid attention to specific features on social media like Jasmine also introduced. So, the most popular social media platforms among children and adolescents, like TikTok and Instagram, also have the highest likelihood of stimulating what we call appearance-focused interactions due to specific features on social media. For instance, being visually focused, allowing the use of beauty filters, to popularization of influencers. And part of these interactions are exposure, of course, this can be to idealized bodies amplified, to influencers, such as thinspiration posts, fitspiration posts. For girls, this typically encompasses thin bodies. For boys, this mainly focuses on muscular bodies. And we also see, like Jasmine mentioned before, that there is also a perceived or a likelihood of being exposed to more body positivity content, which really challenges these idealized appearances. Now, through social media, adolescents can also engage in posting pictures of themselves and their friends, and liking and amplifying this content containing idealized appearances. And when posting, they can also use beauty filters, and of course, they can receive likes and comments which can sometimes be seen, of course, as a form of judgment of their appearance. Now, as Jasmine also mentioned before, if we zoom in on particularly exposure to specific content, the tripartite influence model, is very successful at explaining the eventual impact of exposure to idealized content on a negative body image through two psychological processes called the internalization of beauty ideals, as Jasmine mentioned before, and, the heightening of comparison processes, which then both can result in negative body image components such as body dissatisfaction, or self-objectification or body surveillance. So, here you see a post of Kendall Jenner, which became viral. And you see also people, commenting on this post, and really, exhibiting these comparison processes. So, it seems as if people recognize these comparison processes themselves, but still, yeah, still, it can have a significant impact on their body image even though they recognize these comparison processes. So, we explored through daily diary research how exposure to specific content, namely idealized content and body positivity content, relates to adolescents’ daily body image states, so how they felt about their bodies throughout the day. 108 French adolescents filled in a 10 minute survey each for 14 days, and we measured their exposure and their daily body satisfaction, and their daily body surveillance, meaning the degree to which they thought about their appearances, when, for instance, they were having conversations with friends, or when they were walking around town and they see their reflection in the mirror and they want to check if their appearance is still okay. Here, you can see some cool graphs. Each screen represents a different participant, and the graph represents their exposure to idealized and body positivity content. So, you see, it’s very unique to each media user and it’s also very fluctuating. So, some adolescents were exposed on some days to idealized content, others weren’t. And you see, the missing data points are, of course, the participants who did not fill in the survey during that day. So, it’s very, very individualized, as Jasmine also mentioned, it’s very complex. Are there then daily links? Yes, adolescents who saw more idealized bodies also reported a higher body surveillance that same day. And we also see that adolescents who saw more body positivity content reported a higher body satisfaction. So, the type of content adolescents interact with is crucial, not just the time spent using social media. That’s why it’s so important to pay attention to the specific features of social media and these specific experiences adolescents have in the digital world. We also zoomed in on the uses of beauty filters, which are AI-generated tools to digitally enhance pictures, and they will change facial and body features for you to meet beauty standards. For instance, they will enlarge your eyes, make your nose thinner, and even make your body thinner. And for this, we relied on these so-called self effects theory, which is a very typical theory in communication science, which integrates two types of psychological processes. First of all, you have these self-perception processes which actually refer to individuals subconsciously shaping their own attitudes based on their past behavior. So, in this case, if they used online beauty tools like beauty filters, they would also have, for instance, better attitudes towards these tools in the offline world, such as the uses of cosmetic surgery. And self-presentation processes then refer to people, typically wanting to be consistent in the way they present themselves. So, that’s very human that you always want to present yourself in similar ways, you want to be consistent in how people perceive you, meaning that the way they look online, they also want to emulate it in the offline world. So, if they use beauty filters in the online world, they might want to use some beauty tools like plastic surgery in the offline world. And based on these mechanisms, we wanted to see if filter use among adolescents was linked to more positive attitudes to the uses of cosmetic surgery. And we measured it through three types of attitudes. You have your interpersonal attitudes which refer to self oriented motivation, so, the uses of plastic surgery to feel better about yourself, for instance. Social acceptance then refers to social oriented motivation such as, I want to use plastic surgery because then my partner will find me more attractive. And then the intention of use is, of course, at the future intention to eventually use plastic surgery. And we actually saw that body and face filter use was linked to a heightened social acceptance, so, the idea that you need to use cosmetic surgery to be socially accepted. And also that face filter use was related to future intentions to use cosmetic surgery, so, meaning that the more filters adolescents used, the more they actually wanted to use cosmetic surgery in the future. And this can also be linked to these cosmetic procedures in the face because it’s based on face filters that are typically seen as more normalized and noninvasive, so the step to these facial procedures is much smaller. Now, how can we help adolescents navigate these features? Media literacy is very crucial here, which is the extent to which cognitive and affective structures are present among users to ensure that the risks of interactions are mitigated and the opportunities are actually maximized. And cognitive structures, for instance, refer to the knowledge about the impact of beauty ideals, but also being able to recognize which content can actually be beneficial for your body image and your mental health. And affective structures are then more about minimizing, or at least controlling and recognizing your emotional responses to beauty ideals. And we see from intervention research from my colleagues that affective social media literacy, adolescents who have a high affective social media literacy, post less pictures where they show the perfect appearance, reported higher levels of self-esteem, and reported less feelings of jealousy and comparison processes with beauty ideals on social media. So, media literacy, especially being taught at schools but also at home, is very crucial. So, I want to thank you all for listening to this presentation, and if you have any questions, just let me know.

[Elise Hu]: I just want to jump in on with one quick follow up on this media literacy point, because I’d love for us to get really practical and actionable. When you say media literacy, what kinds of conversations should parents be having with their kids? What do we know? Or what does the research say to us, about what they should best understand? If there’s any sort of key framework or key principles that our kids should understand about this.

[Dr. Chelly Maes]: That’s a very good question. I think the main thing now is more about rationalizing what they see online. So, it’s about navigating children, and watching the content together with your children, that’s a very important part. So, if you see that they’re scrolling through social media and they see a very idealized picture coming up, you can step in and ask questions about it and say, “Well, do you think they use filters? How many pictures do they think they took before they got this perfect picture? Do they maybe use a lot of makeup and so on?” So, it’s really about rationalizing what they see online and filtering out what can, but is seen as idealized content, but also recognizing what is body positivity content, and what can make you feel better. Even learning the skills to make sure that their social media environments are more structured towards these positive experiences by, for instance, learning them to, not like pictures that much that are highly idealized, and like more pictures that are more authentic, or indicating this through Instagram or TikTok. These are all different types of skills, really tech literacy skills also, that parents can talk about with their children.

[Elise Hu]: Does tech literacy then mean that we should take, as a premise, that kids should, or will be using social media? Like, I know there is a debate, especially here in the United States. 

[Dr. Chelly Maes]: Yes.

[Elise Hu]: There is a school of thought that’s like, wait till 15, right?

[Dr. Chelly Maes]: Yes.

[Elise Hu]: Wait to give your kid a phone until they’re 15, or you wait until they’re 15 before they can have social media. But it sounds like, you could take the reverse view, which is, in order to be literate, you kind of actually have to be using the tool or understand the tool, or understand that these are algorithms working on you, and this is how the algorithm picks up information. What is, is there a research consensus on an appropriate age?

[Dr. Chelly Maes]: An appropriate age is typically 12 to 13, that’s what we recommend as communication scientists. We typically don’t recommend, not using social media and only starting to use social media at 15, because then you don’t have these learning opportunities to learn being literate and learn these skills that are very necessary. So, it’s actually until 15, they don’t have access to social media. And then, all of a sudden they take a cold plunge, in the social media environment, and they don’t know what to do, they don’t know how to respond to idealized content. It’s better to learn from an early age and talk about it so they can learn to be more resilient and more literate towards it. So, among communication scientists, there is a big consensus that we don’t agree with the social media ban, and only starting social media when you’re 15 or 16, yeah.

[Elise Hu]: Understood. Okay, really fascinating. And I’d love to hear kind of, any differences among our panelists themselves. Thank you so much, Dr. Maes, and moving on now to Dr. Jennifer Mills who’s going to be building on a lot of the conversations that we’ve had so far. Dr. Jennifer Mills is a registered Clinical Psychologist and Professor of Psychology at York University in Toronto, Ontario. She has more than 25 years of experience researching and treating eating and its disorders. Her research currently focuses on body image and social media, and she’s published several highly influential papers on this topic. This is a topic that is very close to my heart as well. Dr. Mills is a credentialed member of the Canadian Association of Cognitive Behavioral Therapies and is internationally recognized for her work in eating disorder prevention and treatment. When not working, she enjoys traveling and spending time with her husband and her three sons, so also a parent of three kids. Dr. Mills, the floor is yours.

[Dr. Jennifer Mills]: Thank you so much for having me, Elise. And, it’s wonderful to be part of this conversation. So, you mentioned 25 years of experience, and I think that that number is actually relevant to talk about. I finished my PhD in 2001, and my dissertation topic was related to exposure to thin ideal images on body image. But, of course, in those days we were talking about fashion magazines, and music videos, and TV shows, and a lot of the people probably watching today are of that generation, right? So, there have always been thin idealized images or muscular idealized images for young people. Never did I imagine that my career would take this arc, and 25 years later, I’d be studying social media. And, of course, it’s like, you know, fashion magazines on steroids, it’s not just one issue a month that kids can look at, it’s absolutely infinite as we all know. Okay, let me see if I can move my slides. Okay, great. So, we’ve heard a really important concept already mentioned today, and that is social comparison. So, that’s one of the psychological processes that I’ve been studying in my lab with my amazing students and research team. For those who aren’t familiar with that term, it’s the innate desire for us to try to evaluate ourselves relative to other people. And this is a natural human drive. But as has also been talked about, there’s this critical developmental period when kids go through puberty, and now they’re teens, and they’re especially inclined to try to figure out, “how do I measure up, how do I fit in, and how do I see myself as part of, you know, the larger world and especially my peer group,” which then becomes so important at that age. So, a lot of the negative effects of social media come down to this process of social comparison. And we know that young women and girls tend to compare their appearance to attractive peers that they see on screen, on social media. They don’t really compare themselves to family members, all things considered, and they don’t really compare themselves to people who are outside their peer group. But that is the target of social comparison for girls and young women. And that is where people often come away feeling inferior, “I don’t measure up, I’m not as thin as her, I don’t look as good as her,” and those kinds of effects. I would also highlight that it’s the type of social media use that matters. Of course, it’s not scrolling through, you know, funny cat videos that’s going to damage anybody’s body image. It’s this very type, targeted type of social comparison where you’re looking at images of other people and you’re scrutinizing them, and perhaps scrutinizing pictures of yourself before posting them on social media, which we know can take up a lot of time and mental energy of young people. So, it’s this active engagement with social media images that’s associated with increased levels of body dissatisfaction, both with girls and boys. And that can include liking other people’s pictures, or feeling like you have to comment on other people’s pictures. And it’s this act of very, very quick cognitive reactions to what they’re seeing, right? “She looks great, I don’t look so good, I wish I looked like that.” And even when young people are shown images and they know that they’ve been photoshopped or edited, that doesn’t change the fact that they still want to look like that. That’s one of the more concerning findings that we’ve seen, and other researchers have shown, that putting disclaimers or putting warning labels on images that have been altered and are coming soon with the emergence of AI, I imagine it’s going to be the same, it doesn’t change young people’s desire to look a certain way because those images become internalized as “this is what’s beautiful, this is what I want to look like, this is what I need to look like in order to feel like I am attractive, and that I fit in, and that I have value.” Passive consumption of social media, again, less related to body image. And it’s worth mentioning that people have such individualized algorithms now too, right? Like, if I were on social media, which I’m not, if I were on social media, my feed would look very, very different than my teenage sons, right? It’s finding what you like to look at, and then it’s amplifying that. And, and again, during puberty and as kids move into adolescence, what they want to look at, is they want to see, like, “how would I fit in? What would I need to look like to be considered really beautiful, or really muscular and desirable, and valuable to other people?” I’ve been talking about girls, that’s where a lot of my research is in, in young women. But of course, we know that this is a really major and growing problem in boys and young men. The relationship between social media use and what they’re seeing, and then how they perceive and evaluate their bodies. And there are some amazing researchers out there looking at boys and men in particular. Just like girls, social comparison is absolutely happening with them. They’re comparing themselves to idealized bodies that are lean, and muscular, and tall. Height dissatisfaction is very common among young men, and in dark corners of the internet there are, you know, there are strategies that young men talk about to try to change their appearance and make it more in line with this muscular, with this muscular ideal that can lead to incredibly unhealthy behaviors like steroid use, and over exercise, and other kinds of substance use. So, it’s definitely something for us to keep an eye on. And, you know, it used to be the case that when we talked about risk for eating disorders, we were really talking about girls and young women, and now, there’s a lot more recognition that disordered eating and disordered exercise can occur among men and boys, as well. So, that leads us to talking about clinical issues. And often this is really, you know, worrying for parents, and teachers, and caregivers, like all the things that can go wrong for our young kids seem to be, the risk seems to be amplified now that we’re in this milieu of social media and kids seeing things that aren’t necessarily so good for them. So ,there’s a couple key terms to mention here. So one is body dysmorphia. And really generally or simply speaking body dysmorphia refers to a perceptual distortion, you’re seeing your body is something that it isn’t. So, an average person or even a thin person seeing themselves as fat, or a very  muscular man seeing himself as not having any muscles at all. So, there’s some kind of mismatch between the way that our bodies actually look and the way that we’re perceiving them. And it can relate to specific body parts, like people see their ears, or their nose, or some other specific feature as being very different than it actually appears to others, or it can be this kind of global body image dysmorphia. And so in boys and men, we often hear now about muscle dysmorphia, which is that specific phenomenon of boys just like thinking that they are not muscular at all. And in some cases it can be a real distortion from what they actually look like. Eating disorders, of course, a very, very important clinical topic for us to be aware of eating disorders are, can be very, very dangerous and have the highest mortality rate of any group of psychiatric diagnoses. There are different types of eating disorders; however, ranging from, you know, extreme picky eating in childhood. Around the age of puberty, that’s when we start to see the risk for eating disorders like anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, start to emerge, and also binge eating disorder, is another common eating disorder diagnosis. So, there are lots of different types of eating disorders. I know we don’t have time to get into all of it today, but I’m happy to touch on that as a clinical issue. And we’ve already heard about anxiety, depression, which are, at very, very high levels in our young people today. And there are theories around, you know, social media contributing to that, is it causing that? We don’t know. It’s really, really hard to do that research. I would love, you know, there to be the perfect study or set of studies that could replicate that relationship. But it’s very complicated, as you can imagine. And so we don’t, we can’t pin down the cause and effect. But we do know that anxiety and depression rates are higher among young people, particularly those who do spend a lot of, type, a lot of time on social media, doing particular things. Things for parents to look out for, a lot of people listening are probably trying to figure out, you know, what do I look for? And how do I know when things are really, you know, what are the red flags to look out for? All over the world, there are wonderful efforts being put towards the prevention and the treatment of body image, especially in young people. And we’re getting better and better at screening for eating disorder risk. So, there were lots of really bad things about the pandemic. One good thing to come out of the pandemic was this, it was impossible to ignore this surge in the number of young people who were presenting at hospital emergency rooms with symptoms of an eating disorder. And so that has really mobilized the field in healthcare to look for ways to screen for kids, and to get them treatment as soon as possible because we know that early detection, and early treatment, can save lives. It can make a world of difference for a young person who’s struggling with their eating. So, things for parents to look for. So, if your child seems to be really worried about what they’re eating, they’re becoming really picky all of a sudden, or they’re talking about calories, or they’re talking about fat content, and you get the sense that they’re concerned about their eating for reasons to do with muscles, weight, or shape. Okay, so that would be something to discuss with a doctor. We know that if kids are exercising, it’s great for kids to exercise, we want our kids to be doing exercise and sports for the fun of it. But if you get the sense that a child is, you know, kind of connecting calories or muscles with the exercise that they’re doing, that would not be normal for young people. And we don’t want even our younger teens to be doing that, because it is a risky behavior. And then certainly for parents to be aware of symptoms of eating disorders. So, behaviors like extreme restriction or dieting, binging, purging, parents have to be kind of vigilant for what their child might be doing. That could be the sign of an eating disorder and that would be worth talking to a family doctor or a pediatrician about.

[Elise Hu]: One quick follow up question for you, Dr. Mills, is, you know, you mentioned you finishing up your education in 2001, that’s the same time that I was entering college, I believe, and I remember that time, especially the late 90s, being such a sort of thinspo and pro-ana content heavy period. And, as I graduated and came into the work world, things seem to start to shift, at least in media representation, you know, you were starting to see Victoria’s Secret, for example, have, you know, fuller figured models in the store fronts. And I remember being at target and seeing signage in which there was just more representation of different bodies, and shapes, and sizes, and colors. And I thought, oh, wow, you know, we were really in a totally different place, and now that looks like progress. But what have you actually seen in terms of incidence of eating disorders and the prevalence of them over the last 30 years or so?

[Dr. Jennifer Mills]: Yeah, so unfortunately the prevalence is going up with eating disorders. I mentioned that surge particularly carried by increasing rates in young people. I think that’s a really interesting phenomenon that you’ve talked about, like these body ideals that the trends kind of come and go. And for a while it was looking like a curvier ideal might be more, you know, desirable, or internally.

[Elise Hu]: Or at least more diversity, right? 

[Dr. Jennifer Mills]: Or more diversity.

[Elise Hu]: Like, Lizzo was celebrated, right?

[Dr. Jennifer Mills]: Right, yeah, unfortunately I don’t feel that optimistic. I don’t actually think it’s diversity that is preferred or desired. I think it could be different body types, we think of like the fit ideal, or the curvy ideal, or the thin ideal, but any one of those that you choose, is still very difficult to attain, especially for a young person, right? And so they’re going through puberty and they’re looking at these older models, and thinking, “yeah, I want to look like that, or I need to look like that,” and it’s still very unattainable for the average person. 

[Elise Hu]: Yeah.

[Dr. Jennifer Mills]: So, regardless of the ideal, what they all have in common is this kind of very narrow definition of what’s beautiful. And then we’re at the mercy of, you know, corporations and capitalism that try to monetize our attention. So, whatever’s extreme gets our attention, right? And the sort of Kim Kardashian hourglass figure that caught a lot of people’s attention over time, maybe that wasn’t as attention grabbing. And we’re hearing young people talk about a trend back to an ultra thin body type as being the so-called ideal. 

[Elise Hu]: Yeah. Well, this is a really great segue to our next speaker, Dr. Elizabeth (Beth) Daniels, who’s going to talk about how to promote positive body image in children and adolescents. Dr. Daniels is professor and director of the Center for Appearance Research at UW Bristol. She earned her PhD in developmental psychology at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of California, Los Angeles  – here where I am based. Her research examines how girls and young women are affected by sexualization in the media in a myriad of ways, from body image and psychological well-being. She has published and spoken extensively on sexual objectification, sexualization, and positive body image in journal articles, book chapters, popular press and interviews, and many presentations at conferences and to the public. We’re delighted to have you, Dr. Daniels, and the floor is yours.

[Dr. Elizabeth Daniels]: Thanks very much. I’m excited to be here and to be closing on a bit of a redemptive arc – talking about positive body image in youth. And just to orient everyone, I want to start with a definition offered by the leading researchers in this area who note that positive body image reflects an individual’s willingness to accept, appreciate, respect, care for, and respond compassionately towards the body regardless of its appearance, functionality, comfort, and or health. So that’s what we mean. What researchers mean when we say positive body image. And I want to distinguish that from what positive body image is not. And that is it’s not feeling positively about your body all the time. That’s just unrealistic. It’s not possible. Positive body image will ebb and flow, just like other perceptions that we have about our bodies. And it’s also not just an emotion. So that definition included respect, care for, respond compassionately towards the body. So researchers think about positive body image as being pretty comprehensive. So why is positive body image important? We know from research that’s primarily been conducted with adult women. That it’s important for overall well-being, and we do have some research with youth. For example, some work with girls ages 12 to 16 has found that body appreciation, which is a component of positive body image, is related to less dieting, less alcohol consumption, and less smoking, as well as greater intuitive eating. And then we know from research with girls and boys somewhat younger, ages 9 to 11 – their body appreciation is related to higher body esteem, positive affect, less dieting, lower internalization of appearance ideals and last body surveillance. So we have a lot of positives there.Whoops, we skipped ahead a little bit. We also have some good news – and that positive body image can be taught – right. So this is very important. There are a number of intervention programs that exist that are suitable for schools and other youth contexts. And I have a link here for you if you’re interested in reviewing some of the research on this specifically that was written by some of my  colleagues at the Center for Appearance Research. And the other thing that we want to focus on in terms of sort of the good news around positive body image is that it can trigger an upward spiral of other positive emotions and sustained well-being. And we can see this from research done again with adults, but that shows body appreciation is related to self-esteem, optimism and proactive coping. So when we think about that kind of as a package, we see that positive body  image is related to more positive physical health as well as mental health. So it’s really an important sort of experience of the body that we want to promote in young people. So I’m going to spend a lot of time here now talking about what we can do about this. How do we cultivate positive body image in young people now that we’ve covered what it is and why it’s important? So first, I’ll direct everyone to some research that’s been conducted by my colleagues at the Center for Appearance Research, and this work has been done with a partnership – it’s fairly unique –  with Dove in their self-esteem project. So the partnership has produced a curriculum that’s based on research evidence that gives teachers and parents tools for helping have conversations with youth around positive body image. And so you can download these tools readily from the internet, so the resources are available for you. And to have these kinds of conversations with youth that you are raising or that you’re working with. So that’s a tool available to you, and this is just an example of some of the prepackaged content that you can, again, download readily. I’m also going to point you to the Embrace Collective, which is a charity based in Australia, focused on positive on body image. And you can see from that orange band across the center of your screen, they have resources aimed at families, schools, as well as youth sport coaches. And I’ve just kind of selected a few of their recommendations to spend a few minutes to talk about specifically. And they recommend that adults monitor how we talk about our own bodies and other people’s bodies – so avoiding talking negatively about our bodies or other people’s bodies. But we also want to be careful about compliments. So this is a bit counterintuitive – maybe – because we think, oh, it’s a good thing to say nice things about how people look. But unfortunately that actually sends the message that appearance is a really centrally important issue, so we want to be really mindful of not doing that too much. But I’ll also point you to the Positive Body Image Workbook, which is aimed at adults, not children. And so this might be a tool for you as viewers to consult and see. Maybe you could work on some of these, sort of, facets of your own thinking. In terms of recommendations for teachers, the Embrace Collective suggests that teachers really need to address peer appearance teasing in schools, in classrooms. So this is very common behavior, especially in the – kind of the middle school age, and not letting it slide is important. And so they provide tools and trainings for teachers. An example here is, you know, saying in response to peer teasing, for example, “In this classroom, we don’t talk like that. We treat each other with respect.” The Embrace Collective also recommends that teachers avoid having classroom assignments or exercises involving food or weight for the same reason as this compliment issue. It’s dry, undue attention to the body and appearance, and it might be quite triggering for youth who have disordered eating, so that’s something that we also recommend. And finally, I’ll point you to a series of books that have been written by developmental psychologist Charlotte Markey, who’s also an internationally recognized body image expert. And after several decades of doing research on body image in young people, she decided to start writing books directly aimed at young people, and I personally vetted these books – I’ve read them and recommend them. I know they’re evidence based, and that’s why I’m recommending them here this evening – or my evening – but I’m recommending them to you. And then we’ve talked a lot about social media, and I’ll just close with a few other ideas around social media based on some of my own research with Charlotte in the first instance here. And we did some work with pre-adolescent girls and found – some of the other speakers have said – that it’s really the appearance focus behaviors that are problematic in terms of negative body image outcomes. So when you think about girls potentially following beauty accounts or watching makeup tutorials, those kinds of things, that’s when we start to see more negative body image outcomes in pre-adolescent girls. So based on those patterns, we suggest to parents that they consider doing some restricting of pre-adolescent girls’ social media use to limit their involvement with the appearance-focused behaviors. So, for example, you might allow girls to follow family members, but not celebrities, or post photos of pets rather than themselves. And so obviously, parents will need to tailor these kinds of strategies to their children and their particular, you know, judgment around what would work in their case, but these are some ideas to consider. And then, I’ll also just briefly talk about a project that my colleague Tony Roberts and I did a research study in which girls, teen girls, took a three day break from social media. And we found that just across the three day break that at the end, they were reporting lower body surveillance and less body shame. And from this quotation here, you can see we also found that about half of the girls talked about having more positive mental states from this break. So they were saying things like, “it’s making me feel a lot calmer, more centered. I have more space in my mind and it makes me feel a lot lighter and more focused, less cluttered and busy.” So that is another strategy for parents or teachers to consider – doing a short break is kind of a reset for young people that could help them with improving their body image and sort of mental health as well. And then finally, I’ll just point the audience to Common Sense Media, which is a nonprofit in the US. They have loads of guides for parents around all types of media use, including social media. There isn’t a particular body image focus, but they may be valuable tools, nonetheless. And then I’ll just put our social media and availability here for anyone who wants to follow the Center for Appearance Research, or listen to our podcast, which comes out about once a month. So I think that’s my time.

[Elise Hu]: Let’s circle back while you have the floor Dr. Daniels to a question that was raised earlier. Where do you stand? It sounds like you’re given the recommendations for kind of tailoring social media content for the kids. Where do you stand on limiting younger children’s access to social media? Completely like these ideas of bans or certain age based limits.

[Dr. Elizabeth Daniels]: Yeah. So I know that Chelly offered a suggestion – that in the US, the American Academy of Pediatrics just issued a policy statement yesterday, I believe in which they – their position is there’s no specific age that’s universal. And as a developmentalist, I would say, I absolutely agree with that. So parents really have to be the ones who are judging the cognitive maturity of their child, the emotional maturity of their child to be making those decisions. And the notion that Chelly mentioned about providing a lot of scaffolding and teaching around social media use when a child is ready to start is really critical. So it’s sort of the idea of, you don’t just give kids the keys to a car and say, go drive, right? They’ve taken hours and hours and hours of driving instruction, they’ve been monitored, etc.– we need to think about that, similarly, for social media.

[Elise Hu]: Yeah. I’ve also heard the metaphor of how we teach kids to swim and how they learn sort of water safety first, or they have kind of the shallow end of the pool or the kiddy pool before they’re just like dropped in an ocean and we hope that they can handle it. So, I like that a lot. Thank you. Dr. Mills, I’d like to go back to you with this next question since you do see a lot of patients in clinic. How should those who aren’t the actual parents and caregivers – so how should educators, teachers, coaches – help support kids who are struggling when they don’t have, kind of, direct control over the kinds of images or algorithms that the kids see on social media? And yet, they’re clearly their player or their student might be struggling.

[Dr. Jennifer Mills]: Yeah. I think, having it, recognizing and appreciating that their comments matter. So unfortunately, a lot of individuals with eating disorders can remember an instance of a teacher saying something insensitive or a coach saying something really negative about their body. So all adults in a child’s world need to be really mindful that their words can be remembered for a long time and negative comments – or even comments that are seen to be taken as negative by the child – can really have a lasting impact. 

[Elise Hu]: This. Oh, go ahead. Does somebody else want to jump in.

[Dr. Jennifer Mills]: No, I was I was going to say too, that Dr. Daniel’s resources were really good and Embrace Collective the Embrace Hub online has some excellent resources  for teachers because I know that a lot of them want to make a positive difference in kids lives, and this is such a central issue right now,

[Elise Hu]: I’ll just say globally, this problem, or not this problem, this particular issue that we’re discussing feels like such a biosphere, right. There – it’s not just parents who have an influence on our kids. It’s obviously peers, media and a lot of cases, by the time they’re teenagers, the peer and media influence seem greater than ours day to day. So when the – I guess this entire system seems so looks based, and its appearance based focus is not something that can be easily addressed just by staying in my lane and taking care of what I can do as a parent. How do we confront something that’s, like, so systemic? And I – Dr. Fardouly, I’ll let you take this since we haven’t heard from you since the start.

[Dr. Jasmine Fardouly]:  Thank you. It’s really complicated and difficult because there are these strong messages coming from so many aspects of society. But I think one thing that we can do is to encourage young people to invest in things outside of their appearance. So we can encourage them to invest, you know – play sports or you know,  do art or anything else that can be boost their sense of self and that they can identify with – can just take that focus and pressure off the physical appearance. And that can make them more resilient, I think, to some of the messages that they will encounter at some point in their development. I think as well, you know having – I think  it’s important to have diverse physical appearances available within society. This is something that – oh no, I knew this was going to happen; my light slips off – but I think this is something that may be slightly out of the hands of parents, but you know, but I think we really do need to be broadening the bodies that we think are acceptable and, and beautiful as well. So I think that we need two things: we need to take focus off appearance by encouraging other things and invest in other things. But I think because there are so many strong messages around beauty ideals in so many aspects of society, I think we also need to be working towards broadening the bodies that are seen as acceptable, as well.

[Elise Hu]: Fantastic. Okay. Dr. Chelly Maes, a question from the audience asks, and this might as well be for me. How can I help my teen daughter when I feel like the damage from social media might already be done and she is already hyper focused on her body and how she looks, what then? Is it ever too late?

[Dr. Chelly Maes]: Good question. Now, of course it’s never too late. It’s also like Beth mentioned: positive body image can be taught in some ways, and it’s really taught to peers through parents, but also the media content you encounter online. I think, one of the guidelines that were given throughout the presentations, in terms of, thinking about how you talk about your own body is very important. There’s a lot of research showing that the behavior of the parents regarding their bodies, regarding their appearance, it truly affects the body image development of children. So it’s really paying attention to how you talk about your own body. And I think also, and that’s what Jasmine was also referring to, shifting the focus a bit from  appearance to functionality of the body. We see that there has been some research from some colleagues and from the University of Maastricht in the Netherlands. They did some work on stimulating functionality  appreciation among women by letting them reflect and make exercises about what their body can do, how they can take care of their body, and so on. And this really led to diminishing of self objectification and body dissatisfaction among these women. So I think we can translate that also to the adolescence world and really make sure that we shift the focus from appearance to so many other things that your body can do for you. And, yeah, the necessity the body has for your life and for being alive. So I think that’s a very important focus that’s often–I think is forgotten.

[Elise Hu]: Yeah, or even how our bodies feel. What I really work on with my girls when they try on clothes is instead of immediately going to, “oh, that looks cute on you. What a great length or what a great color.” The first thing we always ask is like, “how does that feel in your body? Can you move? Is it too tight here? Can you run? Can you jump? Can you do things?” And then, “how does that material feel? Is it scratchy, is it itchy?” And all of those things. So I think that’s a really great reminder. To build on this, as Dr. Fardouly said in the very beginning, she mentioned that parents can influence body image negatively with modeling – by paying too much attention to their own bodies or making comments about other people’s bodies. And it sounds like Dr. Maes, you just said the reverse is true, right. And so I’ll direct this question to Dr. Daniels first, since this is – since you’ve been talking about sort of the practicalities and what we can do. If we can influence healthy body image, can we do it in a passive way – in the same way that parents influence negative body image in a passive way like; is it simply the absence of talking about bodies that can help, or is it a different way of talking about bodies?

[Dr. Elizabeth Daniels]: Yeah, I think that’s a great question. There’s so much out there that promotes negative body satisfaction or dissatisfaction that I think you do have to be intentional in terms of talking about bodies in ways that are more likely to yield that positive appreciation. And so Chelly’s example of body functionality is a great one. So, you know, if a child says, for example, like, you know, I just I don’t like this part of my body, you know. Redirect or reframe as – well let’s talk about what your body can do. What do you, you know, what are you able to run fast or are you able to pick up something heavy? Let’s help a child generate what they like about their body. And also to acknowledge that everybody has feelings about their bodies, that not liking their body on a certain day or, you know, at a particular time. And that’s just part of being human. But helping them reframe. Okay. So I understand that that’s how you feel right now. And I’m sorry, but let’s also think about all the good things that your body can do and the things that we like about our bodies. So yeah, I think you do need to be, and the research evidence that Chelly mentioned, you do have to be sort of proactive in cultivating as well as modeling your own more positive body image.

[Elise Hu]: Okay. Okay. So it’s not simply just the absence of talking about it at all. Dr. Mills, a question from our audience – are youth who develop faster or slower than their peers at increased risk for body image problems? You mentioned the anxiety for boys around height, for example. How can parents promote positive self-image in these instances?

[Dr. Jennifer Mills]: Yeah. So, kids develop at different rates for sure and reach puberty at different ages. We know from the research that when girls hit puberty, their risk of anxiety, depression, and eating disorders goes up. Generally when boys hit puberty, their self-esteem, sorry it goes, the risk for those negative things goes up. For boys. It’s the opposite. Their self-esteem goes up when they hit puberty. And this kind of makes sense when you think about, well, it really makes sense when you think about the fact that puberty brings girls less in line with the thin ideal, the very thin ideal, and it brings boys more in line with the lean, muscular ideal. So they start these very different trajectories around the time of puberty in terms of body image and self-esteem. So to go back to the question, yes, it can have an impact, but it’s not necessarily intuitive. It can go either way depending on – depending on the gender identity of the child, whether puberty is helping them get to where they hope to be or not. 

[Elise Hu]: Okay. All right. Next question from our audience member. My six year old daughter is already making comments about her appearance in a negative way, and seems to place a high importance on how she looks. What can I do to help shape a healthy body image and change the way she’s starting to analyze herself? So, we’re all women identifying here, so I think we all recognize that point in our lives when we start seeing ourselves in third person. And it sounds like this daughter is starting it around first grade. And any of you can take this.

[Dr. Elizabeth Daniels]: Well I’ll just kind of jump in and reiterate some of the points that both Jasmine and myself made already. It’s really helping a child see that appearance is just one component of all humans, and that we want to encourage them to be prioritizing and focusing more on these other things that are wonderful about them. Right? That they’re, you know, maybe they’re great at soccer or they are really a nice, you know, generous friend and so forth. So emphasizing these more central aspects of who they are and trying to deprioritize appearance. But when talking about appearance, trying to reframe the negative critical lens to a more, well, what do we like about our bodies? There can also be another layer here where there’s some research with older children, teens that if you focus more on controllable aspects of appearance, like clothing, that’s a more productive way to go, because that’s modifiable, right? People can express their identity, they can make changes to their look and so forth. But you can’t change lots of other aspects of your appearance. So parents and teachers and others who work with youth, really shifting the frame can be really beneficial in terms of getting away from these real negative ruminating, kinds of, cognitions around appearance.

[Elise Hu]: Next question. And I think Dr. Maes or Dr. Fardouly you could take this though it is on so many of our minds, which is, what do you propose to be the effects of AI generated content, AI generated filters on youth and body image.

[Dr. Jasmine Fardouly]: I can start if I could. We don’t, we don’t know a lot yet. Research is always slow to kind of catch up with new technology trends. Some of the research that’s come out so far suggests that, like AI avatars for example, It probably depends on how realistic they are. So there are some studies that have looked at AI influences, but the images that use are quite artificial. So they look human, but they’re also a little bit off. So that this is what pictures on paper called the uncanny valley, where it kind of is human, but not quite. That makes people feel uncomfortable, and that those types of AI generated content doesn’t seem to be as harmful for body image. But the technology’s advanced a lot, and there’s now very realistic AI generated content that you can’t even determine, or distinguish from human content. And, we’re doing some research at the moment, and we’re also finding that it has a similar impact to human generated content in promoting beauty ideals and impacting comparisons and things like that. There’s some discussion around whether people know it’s AI generated or not and whether that may change the effect of viewing this type of content. We don’t really know yet. If we look at the research that Jennifer mentioned around disclaimers on human content, that doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter if we know an image has been edited of a human, it is possible that knowing it’s totally not human may change it. But again, some of the early findings that we have at the moment is suggesting it doesn’t really matter either so much, but we don’t know enough yet. But I think that if it’s promoting beauty ideals, then I think it’s likely to be harmful.

[Elise Hu]: Dr. Maes, do you – do you have anything to add? 

[Dr. Chelly Maes]: Yeah, I just wanted to say the same actually as Jasmine, that we do not know that much yet about adolescent’s interactions with Gen AI because research is just starting up. But next to AI generated content, I think it’s also important to discuss the chats adolescents might have with Gen AI, just such as GPT and Gemini. I tried it before and asked about, what is positive body image for instance to ChatGPT? Or how can I learn to love my body and they give answers, or the answers are in line with what the research says. But if I ask ChatGPT, “I feel bad about my body. I want to lose ten kilograms or 10 pounds.” It will just give you instructions on how to do it and how to do it fast. And I think if adolescents who are especially vulnerable to this, who have a heightened body dysmorphia, maybe higher vulnerability to these, these, eating disorders – if they are chatting about these things and there’s no safety, safety yeah, precautions surrounding this and it’s not being controlled or secured – I think that can pose a huge problem. And that’s also the big issue. And the big criticism we have now as communication scientists, these chatbots aren’t – these general purpose chatbots are being developed. And the users who will be the early adopters of these chatbots, which are children, are not taken into account, which is a really big issue. It’s from the children’s rights perspective. It’s  critical that you take into account that children are also part of your digital environment. And currently that’s not the case. And I think we still have a lot to learn from what these interactions with AI will have. Yeah, the kind of impact it will have on adolescents’ development if it will both harm or benefit also for other developmental tasks. So it’s all still a very big blind spot that will need to be investigated very, very quickly. Yeah.

[Elise Hu]: Around the same time that gen AI was really exploding and part of the zeitgeist, so were GLP1s, drugs like Ozempic.

[Dr. Chelly Maes]: Yeah. 

[Elise Hu]: And I bring this up because they’re – it’s like so many things, binaries right, in some there are dualities, right. These GLP ones have been really life changing and transformative for folks who are suffering from various conditions, diabetes, infertility. At other – on the other hand, you know, we live in a world in which thinness is one of our core beauty ideals. And so they are being used for weight loss or for primarily esthetic reasons, and some in some corners, depending on privilege, right, and wealth. So Dr. Mills, do you see the rise of weight loss drugs contributing to how – I guess, how do you see the rise of the use of weight loss drugs being in conversation or contributing to the ideals of thinness that have already existed?

[Dr. Jennifer Mills]: Right, right. Well, you mentioned you know, GLP ones can be very helpful for people who struggle with obesity as a disease. But, I think it could, I think it could be dangerous in terms of our internalized messages around, you know, it’s not okay to be in a larger body. You need to do everything you can to be in a thin body, because thin is better and thin is healthier. And all of these kinds of stereotypes that we hold about, about people in larger bodies. So I think it’s going to perpetuate fatphobia at a societal level and it could impact representation of bodies that we see. You know, if all the actors and all the actresses that we see on screens fit the thin ideal, like that’s not a good thing. And then even in the real world, if we don’t see as much diversity, that could be bad news in terms of this rigidity around the internalized body ideals. So, yeah. So we don’t know if it’s having an effect, but my prediction would be, unfortunately, I think it is going to perpetuate idealizing thinness as the way to be. And we’re going to have to work hard at promoting literacy, health literacy around that to our young people.

[Elise Hu]: Obviously, the big broad duality that we’re talking about today is social media, especially when social media can create spaces of connection and empowerment, but then simultaneously these places and spaces of harm. So the question from the audience is, and each of you can kind of take a different dimension of this, is how can individuals make sense of these competing influences within a single feed and what practices help us promote more flourishing and minimize harm?

[Dr. Jennifer Mills]: Well, I really liked Dr. Daniels mentioning the detox study. We also did a detox study in young adult university aged adults, and taking a break from social media actually seems quite promising. I know it might be unrealistic to think we can keep kids away from social media altogether, but taking these short breaks shows promise in terms of improving mental health and well-being. And we did a follow up study where after a digital detox, they were allowed, participants were allowed, to go back on to social media. Many of them did, but they did so at lower rates. They didn’t spend as much time on social media, and they talked about cleaning up their feeds. Like after a break, and these were young adults mind you, but nevertheless, they thought, okay, well, now that I’m seeing it again, I can kind of, I can kind of appreciate that this content isn’t so good for me. I don’t want to see as much of this kind of thing. I think that we also have to advocate for user rights on social media, that we have the right to reset our algorithm, and it should be easy and it should be quick, and you know, young people, should, especially should be aware that if you search for a particular topic, it’s going to give you more and more and more of that. And that’s not necessarily – you’re not necessarily consenting to that content. So I think we need to really reinforce the need for informed and ongoing consent for social media users as to what they’re seeing.

[Elise Hu]: Anybody else want to jump in on that one? 

[Jasmine Fardouly]: Yeah. Yeah, I think some of the research I’ve been doing as well suggests that even seeing a small number of posts that challenge beauty ideals, that have diverse physical appearances can reduce the harm of the idealized posts. So you don’t have to just have all positive posts within your feed for it to be good for body image. Just a small number can, can reduce the harm of the ideal content. So I think that’s quite encouraging because I think if we’re trying to move towards a space where it’s just positive content, I think that might be unrealistic because people do have this desire to present themselves in certain ways to others. But as Jennifer was mentioning, I think, you know, having been investigating this topic for a while now, it’s been such a huge evolution within social media and, and changes in how much users have influence over the content that they see. And more and more, we’re finding that the algorithms are so strongly influential on what people do. And it doesn’t have to be what they lack or who they follow can be something their friend likes. It could be things that are totally out of their control. And so it’s harder for people to create a positive environment for themselves on some platforms that are really strong, have strong algorithmic recommendations. And so I also think we need to be advocating for regulation, that regulation that makes these platforms safe rather than just banning people from it, because we know that young people will find ways. In Australia here, we have a ban now, but young people are finding their way onto it anyway. And concerns around that is that, you know, one of the biggest things we used to recommend is that parents have this open dialog. So if they come across harm, they’re going to come to you and discuss it. My concern around the ban is that, if they are on it anyway, which many young people are, they might be afraid to talk to their parents about any harm because they’re going to get in trouble. So I think we need regulation. We need to be thinking about what functions and features are driving home, what are promoting idealized bodies that you know or what, you know, and then reducing that harm and increasing the benefits. And I do think that we, personally, I think we need to be advocating for more regulation, but, that really focusing on the nuances of where the harm and benefits are.

[Elise Hu]: Right. And why put the policy onus on the user. And when you can put the policy onus on the very powerful companies that are creating and making the sort of superstructure of which decisions and which features that we have in the first place. So you raise a really important issue. All right. This question occurred to me also as we were in conversation, and it’s also about kind of these modern times that we live in because we are of this – we are in this like wellness, wellness as a giant industry, and wellness as a big part of our zeitgeist culture these days. And the question is, what’s the line between healthy and toxic when it comes to esthetic focused content online, such as fitness and nutrition accounts? You know, because, and this is a very sort of blurry place when it comes to, eating, disordered eating as well. So it’s like, well, what’s the difference between just like getting your macros and your protein and then tipping over into disordered eating? What are signs that parents can look out for that the content that they’re consuming, or the behavior that they’re getting into is actually getting harmful rather than healthy? Dr. Mills, you want to take this first?

[Dr. Jennifer Mills]: Yeah. I think it’s a great question. I’ve got a few thoughts going through my mind. I mean, one is – one thing that parents could do specifically, I think, is to do activities together, right? Like disordered behaviors or symptoms tend to happen in secrecy. So exercising with your kids, and getting out and doing things together or planning meals together as a family with the hope – I know it’s not always possible, but the hope of always eating together as a family or a few times a week. Making a point of eating the same foods at the same time, sitting around the table together. So I think, you know, being involved in our kids’ lives is so – it’s so important – and it’s hard. Like we’re all time stretched and, and a lot of adults my age find that they’re spending more time on social media than they want to, you know, like social media addiction is a problem for people across the lifespan. And I saw an article recently about how, you know, boomers and grandparents.

[Elise Hu]: Yes. Our parents. I’m very concerned about the screen time and my dad. Yeah.

[Dr. Jennifer Mills]: Right. And grandkids are having to tell their grandparents, okay, grandpa, it’s time to put the iPad away. So we all have to be accountable, and we have to be transparent about how hard it is, but do our best to make time for socializing and make time for other important activities.

[Elise Hu]: Gosh. We could  – I feel like this panel has been so rich and engaging that we could talk about this for  another hour, but it looks like this – our time is already up. I can’t believe it. Kris Perry, this has gone by very quickly, and we have so many resources for you that are going to be on the main page. Kris, you can talk to folks about that. But just on behalf of myself, I just want to thank our esteemed panel. You all have shared so generously about your research and insights, and I know I’ve personally learned a lot, and I’m certain that the audience has to. Kris, over to you.

[Kris Perry]: Thanks, Elise, and to all of the panelists today for sharing your expertise and insight. Today’s discussion underscored that while social media can shape how young people see their bodies, adults can play a powerful role in helping children and adolescents develop resilience, perspective, and a healthier relationship with both media and themselves. To learn more about Children and Screens, and access our free research back resources, please visit childrenandscreens.org. If you’re interested in supporting this work, contributions help us continue offering trusted, independent guidance to families and professionals. You can donate by scanning the QR code on your screen or visiting our website. Thank you.