Social Media – The Food and Fame Game
By Elle Mace NcfED
Social media can be a difficult place to navigate when it comes to our body image and relationship with food. The internet is filled with unvetted information and it can be overwhelming to know what to believe and absorb.
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If you’re anything like me, when you open your Instagram account, your feed is flooded with a host of seemingly perfect people with perfect bodies and lives telling you how you can live that life too. As an eating disorder therapist, and someone who recovered from a 17-year eating disorder, I’ve seen firsthand the huge impact of social media on body image and self-worth in myself and in my clients. Social media was the standard I measured my body and life against, causing my self-esteem to plummet. I used social media to see what others were eating and the body hacks they used, and in the process lost touch with myself. Social media has as much power as we give it. In recognizing these patterns in myself and those I work with, I’ve found ways to lessen the negative impact of social media on self-worth so it works for you. First, let’s talk about the melting pot that is social media.
What You See is NOT What You Get
I find it helps to remember the world before social media. Just 10 years ago, Facebook was still building a following and hardly anyone knew about Instagram. Before social media exploded, we didn’t have the option to compare our lives to every influencer every day. We didn’t have access to the details of their intentionally curated lives and bodies. With the explosion of social media, something happened in our collective psyche. In a sense you could say we gave away our free-will agency. We started looking outside ourselves to find out how we should live, eat, work and play. And the worst part is the standards were holding ourselves too are not realistic – or even beneficial for most of us. Anyone can hop on Instagram and put their way of living out there like it’s the master plan we all need. If you couple that with a highly charismatic personality, you’ve got an instant influencer who will attract hundreds of thousands of followers. The question is, is anyone checking to make sure these people are qualified to give advice about how we should live? The answer is no. It’s up to us to check the sources and accounts we’re following to verify they are a reliable source.
“We started looking outside ourselves to find out how we should live, eat, work and play. And the worst part is the standards were holding ourselves too are not realistic – or even beneficial for most of us.”
Worth = Looks and Money
Identifying your self-worth with how your body looks or how much money you make isn’t new. That idea has been around since Hollywood and advertising came into being. The accessibility of social media is what makes it potentially toxic. Images and words flood our psyches, sometimes for hours a day. Le’ts remember that advertising is simply based on the idea of convincing someone they are somehow incomplete and then feeding them the answer to their “problem.” We’re constantly told what we should look like, how we should live, how we should feed ourselves, how we should work out and so on. The simple fact is, no matter how noble the intent of the influencer, they make money by getting us to want what they have. That’s a faulty system if you’re the consumer. We’re willingly buying the idea that our lives need to look like someone else’s. That our bodies need to look like someone else’s. The weight loss industry is it’s own beast. Raking in hundreds of millions by selling us the idea that there is a higher level of perfection that would make us happier. What if we just said, “No, thank you?”
“Just 10 More Minutes”
We all know this. Social media is addictive. We’ve all been there. We open Instagram to check a friend’s account or find something… an hour later, we’re still mindlessly scrolling. This isn’t accidental. Social media gives you mini doses of dopamine to keep you attached to your phone. It’s science and they know how to use it. We may not pay money for any of these social media sites, but we are paying. We have to remember this is a multi-billion dollar industry highly invested in our attachment to their product and services. We all know the saying, “It’s not personal, it’s business.” Well, that couldn’t be more true here and it would help us all to remember it.
Do We Have to End the Relationship?
So, how to we develop a healthy relationship with social media? Here are three tips to keep you grounded and turn the social media volume down":
Reduce your screen time
It sounds simple, right? But do you really pay attention to how much you’re on your phone? Start noticing how much screen time you’re racking up and notch it down. Give yourself 15 minute chunks of time to surf the social ocean and set a timer so you know when it’s time to get off. Then put your phone down and go talk to your neighbour or take a walk or anything that reminds what real life is about.
Clean up your follow list
Take a deep inventory of the accounts you follow and delete ANY ACCOUNT that causes you to feel unworthy, less than or encourages you to question yourself. If you’re not sure about a certain account, do some checking. Does this person really know what they are talking about? You are the guardian of the gates of your eyes and ears, and setting high standards for what you see and hear will increase your self-worth exponentially.
Increase emotional resilience and independence
This is the ability to regulate and process your own emotions without the validation of others and be able to respond to stressful situations and self-soothe. An example would be seeing something on social media which triggers you and you being able to accept and work through the trigger rather than compare or turn to a coping mechanism.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Elle Mace NcfED
Elle Mace is a eating disorder and body dysmorphia therapist,
weight loss and nutrition coach who helps men and women all over the world. Supporting them to find food and body freedom, grow their confidence and improve all aspects of their lives with positive psychology and neuroscience.