The difference is sometimes hard to accept for children who tend to put aside their peers who are not like them. The phenomenon affects, for example, overweight students who generally have fewer friends in their class than children with a standard weight.
A study from the Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California in the United States interviewed 504 tweens aged 10 to 12. It emerges that the pupils are designated on average as “friend” by five people in the class, and as “enemy” by two people. For overweight children, the numbers increase to 4 and 3 respectively: they are on average less appreciated and more considered as enemies by their comrades. Overweight or obese children have more friends whose feelings are not reciprocal, and “frenemies”, a portmanteau word resulting from the contraction between “friends” (“friends”) and “enemies” “).
Social rejection harmful to health
“Our results are alarming because if we continue to have a social environment where the norm is to point the finger at overweight, these children will continue to be ostracized”, worries Keyla de la Haye, lead author of the study. . This social exclusion risks leading the children concerned to loneliness, depression, and bad eating or physical habits. Thus, their exclusion from the group reduces their participation in physical and sports activities, for example at recess. This reinforces their overweight, and social isolation is a vicious cycle. But this phenomenon of rejection of other children also leads to other health consequences, including greater inflammation and less resistance to viruses. For researchers, one of the solutions is through awareness campaigns against the rejection of overweight children. “We have campaigns on gender identity, racism or ethnic origin, we should integrate the issue of obesity more into our repertoire”, underlines Keyla de la Haye.
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