Networking media with fitness gurus, seemingly flawless models and dangerous trends can become overwhelming for users. Is abstinence a solution?

Narrow waists, round buttocks, thin legs: many people, especially young people, find it very difficult to escape such beauty standards that constantly flood social media such as Instagram and TikTok. And there are also some particularly dangerous trends – the so-called “thigh gap” for example, a trend concerning women that first appeared on the Internet about a decade ago. The term “thigh gap” describes the existence of a characteristic “gap” high between the two legs, which is supposed to be achieved through ascetic diet and systematic exercise.

For most women who are at a healthy body weight, having a “thigh gap” is neither something they can, nor is they interested in acquiring. However, there are still quite a few women who pursue it. On Google, for example, there are several related suggested questions such as “is the thigh gap healthy?” or “how can I get a gap between my legs?”. Regarding the “waist challenge” on the other hand, for example, one must have a waist so thin that someone else can wrap their arm around it and drink a glass of water.

At the same time, there are of course less extreme, more subtle trends, such as “What I eat in a day” – a trend that is very dear to Instagram and TikTok users and has been observed for years. Young girls take videos of everything they’re supposed to eat during the day – mostly sugar-free, high-protein meals. There is also the trend of “body positivity”, i.e. feeling good about one’s body regardless of whether one is fat, thin or has some kind of disability. But given the way the algorithm works, posts related to body positivity rarely appear to users.

Even a week off is important

Many studies have proven that the way we see ourselves affects our level of self-esteem. A study from York University in Canada now comes to explain how our self-esteem changes through abstaining from social media, even if it is done for a short time: the young women who took part in the research began to feel more self-esteem and face in a more positive way their bodies after just one week of social media abstinence.

The research, published on the ScienceDirect database, involved 66 female students who were divided into two groups: one group used social media normally, while the other had to not use any social media for a week. Before and after the week in question, all participants were asked how satisfied they were with their bodies, as well as whether they would like to have a model body. The self-esteem of women who abstained from social media was boosted – and abstinence had the greatest effect on women who had internalized beauty standards more strongly.

As the authors of the research point out, this may not be due only to the abstinence from social media, but also to the different way of utilizing free time, since the participants, instead of sitting on their mobile phones, probably spent more time on the fresh air, with friends or doing a sport. And all these activities contribute to improving human mental health.

What are companies doing about it?

So far, almost no measures are being taken to address this particular problem. Many young people find it difficult to distance themselves from social media, and as the years pass, the average use of social media is constantly increasing.

This January, Meta announced that it will now hide inappropriate content from underage users – as long as they have registered their real age.

In addition, the regulations that are put in place often make a hole in the water. The EU’s digital services act aims, for example, to protect minors online from problematic and inappropriate content, such as that which leads to eating disorders, by providing that the company that manages the respective networking medium should hide or delete posts of such content. However, according to research by the organization Reset.tech, only 30% of posts with relevant inappropriate content were deleted in total – TikTok had the lowest percentage of all platforms.

Edited by: Giorgos Passas