Selfie obsession dangerous for teenage girls

In 2014, an English teenager hit the headlines after trying to kill himself failing to take “the perfect selfie”. His story, so sadly symptomatic of our times, had made headlines around the world and panicked parents around the world. Since then, many researchers have been working to study the influence of the selfie on the mental health of adolescents. According to a study published in the Journal of Children and Mediaif taking a picture is not a bad thing in itself, when it starts to obsess a young person, it can have very harmful consequences on mental health, girls being particularly vulnerable.

For their study, researchers from the University of Arizona (United States) followed 278 adolescent girls aged 14 to 17. The latter had to answer an online survey to indicate the frequency with which they shared their selfies on social networks and with which they used photo editing techniques (applications to smooth the skin, reduce bulges or correct red eyes ). They also answered a series of questions aimed at measuring the time and effort spent selecting selfies to share on social media. Finally, the girls had to answer questions carried out to establish their level of self-objectivity and the degree of preoccupation with their appearance.

“Our main conclusion is that we shouldn’t worry too much about children taking selfies and sharing them; that’s not where the negative effects come from. It was the investment and the assembly that produced negative effectsexplains Jennifer Stevens Aubrey, lead author of the study. Girls who self-objected were more likely to be ashamed of their bodies or anxious about their appearance. Self-objectification is the idea that you come to see yourself as an external object to be looked at by others”she explains.

The role of parents and educators

In their study, the researchers explain that they focused on adolescent girls because they are particularly vulnerable to this phenomenon. “Girls are socialized in a way that causes them to self-object to a greater extent than boys; it’s a pretty consistent result”, says Larissa Teran, co-author of the study. Because of this, girls are also more likely to suffer from body image disorders, which can lead to depression or even eating problems.

“Self-objectification is the pathway to so many things in adolescence that we want to prevent. Interventions should therefore focus on how we can encourage girls to develop self-awareness that is not just about how they look to others”explains Jennifer Stevens Aubrey.

Thus, parents and educators must be on the lookout. If a teenager seems to be obsessed with selfies, maybe talk to them about it so “avoid problems in the future”, they suggest.

Many studies of this kind have already been carried out

This study is far from being the first of its kind. In December, Australian research conducted on 996 teenagers of both sexes had already shown that many Snapchat and Instagram users tended to skip meals and exercise excessively to lose weight or avoid gaining it. .

“A key part of preventing eating disorders is getting the message across that our self-esteem should be defined by a combination of our abilities, values ​​and relationships.develops the researcher according to which call on the parents to take their responsibilities. Parents have an important role to play in their children’s early use of social media: past research has shown that control over time spent on social media is associated with higher life satisfaction in pre-teen girls and boys ”explained the researchers.

In 2016, a study published in the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, had associated social media addiction with anorexia, bulimia and other eating and body perception disorders. Based on the cross-analysis of two questionnaires completed by nearly 2,000 young adults, this work showed that the most connected people were twice as at risk, regardless of age, income or sex. internet user.