Another day, another negative headline about social media’s impact on mental health.
Two former college athletes have authored a book that details the deleterious effects Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok have on the mental and physical health of female athletes.
SPRING Forward: Balanced Eating, Exercise, and Body Image in Sport for Female Athletes was written by sports medicine expert Dr. Kathryn Vidlock, medical student Catherine Liggett and dietician Andrew Dole, and its authors explain not even pros like Serena Williams are immune from the lure of chasing unrealistic body goals.
“False information is often perpetuated on social media by ‘fitness influencers’ who are not actually qualified to give health information,” they argue.
Photoshop and other software to manipulate images is only making things worse, as they project “unrealistic” body images to those who see the pictures on social media and in advertising.
“Many teens cannot achieve this body type without using damaging restrictive eating. They feel the pressure to look ideal and subsequently they feel they are never good enough when they do not duplicate the unrealistic bodies seen in the media,” they say.
The book details many such instances with sneakers-on-the-ground stories from female athletes: One admitted to running 5 miles for the sin of eating a single cookie; another passed out at the gym while working out without eating for 24 hours.
SPRING Forward claims to offer plans for those seeking peak performance without sacrificing their own health in the process.
Recently, experts have weighed in on how TikTok in particular bombards its young and vulnerable users in a matter of minutes after logging on to the platform with both false nutritional information and images that can encourage eating disorders.