Study finds link between eating disorders and watching TV

Researchers from Harvard Medical School’s Department of Global Health and Social Medicine have found a link between media consumption and eating disorders among adolescent girls in Fiji.

The findings published in a Medical Journal highlighted that for parents wanting to reduce the negative influence of TV on their children, the first step is normally to switch off the television set.

But a new study suggested that might not be enough.

The survey showed that it turns out indirect media exposure, therefore, having friends who watch a lot of TV, might be even more damaging to a teenager’s body image.

What they found was surprising.

The study’s subjects did not even need to have a television at home to see raised risk levels of eating disorder symptoms amongst the adolescent girls in Fiji.

In fact, by far the biggest factor for eating disorders was how many of a subject’s friends and schoolmates had access to TV.

By contrast, researchers found that direct forms of exposure, like personal or parental viewing, did not have an independent impact, when factors like urban location, body shape and other influences were taken into account.

The researchers said it appeared that changing attitudes within a group that had been exposed to television were a more powerful factor than actually watching the programs themselves.

It said, in fact, higher peer media exposure were linked to a 60 percent increase in a girl’s odds of having a high level of eating disorder symptoms, independently of her own viewing.

Lead author Anne Becker, vice chair of the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School, said this was the first study to attempt to quantify the role of social networks in spreading the negative consequences of media consumption on eating disorders.

She said their findings suggest that social network exposure is not just a minor influence on eating pathology in Fiji, but rather, is the exposure of concern.

This is Becker’s second study of the media’s impact in Fiji, which is an ideal location for broadcast media research because of the recent arrival of television, in the 1990s, and the significant regional variations in exposure to TV, the internet and print media.


Story by: Roneel Lal