Social Media in Recovery: Is It Time to Ditch All Social Media in Recovery?

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Social media has a big influence on most young people’s lives. Teenagers and young adults often spend several hours a day on social media, sharing information and photos, looking through other people’s posts, and communicating with comments and messages.

In some situations, social media can be a space where young people connect with others who share their experiences or understanding of the world. For young people facing health challenges, these connections can be especially important. Through social media, they may be able to find additional sources of support and information that are hard to find elsewhere.

However, social media can also share negative and harmful messages about health. Young people using social media are often exposed to the idea that health is an individual responsibility and that being ‘not healthy’ is a personal failure. These ideas can also connect health with small body size and low body weight, spreading harmful misconceptions about what it means to be healthy.

Social Media, Beauty Ideals, and Eating Disorder Recovery

Young people in recovery from eating disorders are often exposed to ideas and norms that conflict with the aims of recovery. Recovery involves a combination of physical, behavioural, cognitive and social changes that redefine a young person’s relationship with their self and body. This includes re-evaluating beauty ideals and learning to value themselves on multiple aspects of their personality and actions rather than on their body and appearance.

Social media is full of messages that contradict these aims. Our societies are full of eating, food, and body ideals that encourage restriction, slimness, and exercise. These ideals are reproduced in social interactions and the media, including social media.

Pro-ED Accounts

Young people on social media may also be exposed to accounts that actively promote eating disorders. Pro-ED content includes photos and texts that actively encourage dangerous eating attitudes and behaviours. Pro-ED accounts may share content that promotes thinness, gives advice to others, and celebrates low body weight as an ideal.

Young people using social media can easily come across online communities of Pro-ED content. These communities are connected through hashtags like ‘proana’ and ‘thinspiration’. Pro-ED content may also include ‘fitspiration’ hashtags that post ‘motivating’ images of ‘fit’ bodies. These accounts tend to share the same themes of dieting, exercise guilt, and restraint found in pro-ED content.

While some platforms block content pro-ED hashtags, users can quickly create new hashtags to avoid censorship and find other ways to share content. This means that it’s still easy to access pro-ED content on most social media platforms.

Pro-Recovery Accounts

Some young people in eating disorder recovery follow and use ‘pro-recovery’ accounts. Through these accounts, young people share their personal recovery journeys with others with posts and images. They may use recovery accounts to stay committed to recovery and/or with the aim of helping others.

Recovery accounts often share before/after photos of weight changes and photos of foods or drinks they consume throughout the day. They may celebrate eating foods previously considered ‘unsafe’ and feared.

However, recovery-orientated Instagram communities also have the potential to cause harm. They may encourage young people to compare themselves to others and devalue their own strengths and progress. Posts that celebrate eating ‘feared foods’ may, in fact, disguise self-praise of harmful eating habits that can influence other users. Recovery-orientated posts may also contain triggering content.

A 2021 study analysed content from 600 pro-recovery Instagram posts. They found that behaviours and signs of eating disorders were present in around 1 in 5 images. Only 1 in 10 posts encouraged seeking professional help. This suggests that pro-recovery posts still have the potential to encourage or trigger disordered eating behaviours while overlooking some of the most important elements of recovery.

Learning From Social Media: Conflicts with Recovery

When young people use social media in eating disorder recovery, they may come across content that contradicts their recovery goals and processes. Because every young person’s recovery experience is different, even pro-recovery accounts may push ideas that contradict their individual aims.

Pro-recovery accounts also tend to portray a very narrow range of bodies as evidence of ‘recovery’, particularly white, thin, and cis-gendered bodies. This means that they fail to represent or relate to the experiences of many young people. For most teenagers, recovery will look very different from the images shared.

Sharing Photos and Self-Objectification

Self-objectification happens when young people internalise experiences of objectification from others and begin to objectify themselves. In societies where bodies – particularly female bodies – are objectified at all levels, self-objectification among young people is common. Young people who self-objectify treat themselves as sexual objects that should be evaluated and judged based on their appearance.

Self-objectification is, unsurprisingly, linked to body shame and body dissatisfaction. Research shows that women who place more self-value on their physical attributes are more likely to experience appearance-related anxiety and body shame.

Platforms like Instagram, where young people share and view photos of themselves, can encourage self-objectification. They create opportunities to scrutinise the appearance of their own bodies and the bodies of others. While not all photos are necessarily objectifying, many photos shared by people in eating disorder recovery have objectifying characteristics that encourage young people to evaluate and judge their bodies. Research has found that Instagram use is linked to greater self-objectification.

Comparisons with Others

Social media encourages young people to compare themselves to others. It’s easy for young people to compare their own bodies to the countless accounts of ‘ideal’ or ‘aspirational’ bodies they see on Instagram and other platforms. This process may cause individuals to feel more dissatisfied with or distressed about their bodies.

Studies have found that women who are more inclined to compare themselves to others experience more body image concerns when viewing ‘fitspiration’ images on Instagram.

Should Young People Avoid All Social Media in Early Recovery?

Social media has many well-documented, harmful effects on young people’s body image and self-evaluations. Even if young people try to avoid certain accounts, they are easily exposed to content that idealises certain types of bodies and behaviours. Young people who use social media to support their recovery speak about their active – even hypervigilant – efforts to moderate the content they engage with.

With this in mind, it may be better for young people to avoid all social media in early recovery. This practice helps teenagers and young adults stay away from ideals and values that conflict with their recovery journey. It helps them to avoid triggering content and posts that directly or indirectly encourage disordered eating behaviours.

Ditching social media may also give young people more space to define their recovery journey in a way that reflects their individuality and personal story. Social media can pull young people away from their own emotions and needs and encourage them to fit within the mould of another. This may obstruct a young person’s journey of personal growth and identity (re)-formation.

The Wave Clinic: Specialists in Eating Disorders

The Wave Clinic is a specialist treatment space for children, adolescents, and young adults. We’re a Global Centre of Excellence for treating eating disorders, drawing on exceptional expertise and experience from around the world.

Our programs are trauma-focused, addressing the experiences, memories, thoughts, and emotions that underpin disordered eating behaviours. With diverse evidence-based modalities, we balance self-acceptance and self-love with personal growth and positive change. We support young people to plan and build fulfilling futures that provide resilience and motivation.

At our centre, every member of staff, including support staff and chefs, is trained to support young people with eating disorders. We offer 24-hour medical support and facilities for young people at the highest risk. Most young people live collectively with others in our Main House, connecting with others who share experiences and goals.

If you’re interested in finding out more about our programs, get in touch today. We’re here to support you.

Fiona - The Wave Clinic

Fiona Yassin is the founder and clinical director at The Wave Clinic. She is a U.K. and International registered Psychotherapist and Accredited Clinical Supervisor (U.K. and UNCG).

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