How often are you on Facebook? The social media site could actually be contributing to unhealthy eating habits. A new study reveals that college women who use Facebook are more likely to have disordered eating habits, according to Mother Jones.
Facebook has been blamed for depression, isolation, jealous and other types of emotional dissatisfaction in the past. It's therefore somewhat unsurprising that the social media site is now being linked with unhealthy eating. After surveying 960 college-aged women, the researchers found that Facebook could be impacting health habits.
"Women who spent 20 minutes on Facebook reporter greater maintenance of weight and shape concerns and greater increases in anxiety compared to women in the control condition, which demonstrates that Facebook is influencing well-established eating disorder risk factors," said Pamela K. Keel, one of the researchers, in an interview with CNET.
So what about Facebook actually causes the eating disorders? When someone posts a picture on Facebook, the lack of "likes" can influence the way a person thinks about themselves. In addition, the multitude of photos from friends can also make a person potentially feel self-conscious about their own body image, according to The Atlantic.
"Now it's not the case that the only place you're seeing thin and idealized images of women in bathing suits is on magazine covers," said Keel in a news release. "Now your friends are posting carefully curated photos of themselves on their Facebook page that you're being exposed to constantly. It represents a very unique merging of two things that we already knew could increase risk for eating disorders."
The findings reveal that Facebook, like magazine ads or commercials, could help contribute to eating disorders among women. The researchers encourage those on Facebook to consider what they're pursuing when they post.
"That these effects could be discerned after only 20 minutes of typical Facebook use in a laboratory setting raises concerns about how the use of the site throughout the day may impact eating disorder risk," stated the researchers in their paper, according to Mother Jones.
The recent findings were published in the International Journal of Eating Disorders.
