The Association Between Social Media Addiction, Eating Attitudes, and Life Satisfaction in Adolescents

OpenAlex · İngilizce

In today’s increasingly digitalized world, social media have become indispensable to daily life, providing easy access to vast information. However, concerns arise about uncontrolled and unconscious use of social media, especially among younger generations. Social media, which adolescents turn to meet their various psychosocial needs, such as emotions, thoughts, and experiences, are believed to influence their food choices, nutritional habits, exercise routines, sleep patterns, and, ultimately, their overall health. Specifically, nutritional habits of teenagers are affected by a broad range of psychosocial and environmental factors. Since adolescence attributes an increased importance to physical appearance, the ideal body image portrayed on social media enhances teenagers’ vulnerability to body dissatisfaction. It makes them prone to developing eating disorders. Available research indicates that social media addiction is associated with an increase in eating disorders and a decrease in life satisfaction, which, in turn, can result in deteriorating social relationships, social withdrawal, and an inability to take adequate responsibility for one’s health and nutrition, thus further perpetuating social media addiction. In this context, educational interventions aimed at families’, children’s, and adolescents’ awareness about conscious social media use could be crucial steps to improve public health and safeguard the well-being of future generations.