28 Comments
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Anton's avatar

This was devastating—and essential.

What hit hardest wasn’t just the data or the charts. It was Grace’s story. I know girls like her. I’ve seen firsthand how quickly "getting healthy" turns into a spiral of obsession and self-erasure.

The line about anorexia being reframed as a lifestyle, not a disorder, stopped me cold. That’s exactly what these echo chambers do. They take pain and rebrand it as virtue.

The “Cobra Effect” comes to mind here. Platforms optimize for engagement without realizing—or admitting—that they’re incentivizing the very behaviors making kids sick. It's not just a policy failure. It’s a design failure.

Thank you for this work. It matters.

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Meghan Hooper's avatar

Thank you for writing this and for doing this important work. I currently have a 12-year old daughter fighting body dysmorphia and emetophobia, which has been exacerbated by instagram and youtube. As a parent, limiting her accessibility to social media is a daily battle.

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Jeff Shepherd, RP.'s avatar

Great research and writing! Thanks for sharing :)

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Tim's avatar

Demanding social media (or any) companies to be more responsible is fine and all but until the overwhelming instinct among parents is to first demand the same of themselves we should presume that directing such demands to nebulous organizations (‘companies’) will only serve to soothe the chronic psychic anxiety of parents who prioritize friendship over respect with their children, who haven’t the resilience to sacrifice the short term tranquility of ‘being liked’ by their children for the delayed satisfaction of knowing that they are raising and contributing to society beings who are by habit well equipped to withstand, and even thrive, amidst the destructive temptations that any tolerable society is bound to vomit up.

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Kristina Lerman's avatar

parents need all the help they can get ....

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Tim's avatar

… ?

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Mr. Sigma's avatar

I think Kristina means that with all of this drama, parents can feel overwhelmed with their children constantly comparing themselves to others.

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Kristina Lerman's avatar

That's correct. Back when we were growing up, our parents saw who we were hanging out with and disapprove when necessary. These days, I have no idea who my kids are hanging out online with - it is completely invisible to me.

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Mr. Sigma's avatar

As a child who has had experience with strangers online, I can say that my parents are trying to get more involved with this situation.

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Tim's avatar

I presume as much. But I don’t see how it addresses my point.

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John Murphy's avatar

I’m glad if validates what most engaged conservative parents have known for many years.

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Kristina Lerman's avatar

All engaged parents saw the detrimental effects of 24/7 connectivity on their kids.

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Roman S Shapoval's avatar

I've personally seen a teen in my own family develop an eating disorder since the lockdowns. The blue light from screens also impacts our hunger/satiety hormone, leptin, and spikes dopamine, which makes us addicted to chronic stress. Not good. Thanks for sharing this important topic.

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Louise Gangelhoff's avatar

Addiction of various kinds has almost become the norm in our culture of compete, compare, and, take advantage of.

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Mr. Sigma's avatar

this is really good i got loads of info even in the first segment for me project!

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Emma Speer's avatar

Thanks for this. This is so true. I’ve been trying to create content to reach young girls and women struggling with eating disorders, but social media makes it difficult. Relevant hashtags such as anorexia immediately get flagged and killed by the algorithm. How do we get our content to those who may benefit from it?

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Therese  (Tess) Connolly, LCSW's avatar

Thank you so much for writing this article! I definitely agree with many of the points put forward, especially as a clinical social worker for decades….I have seen the rise of severe eating disorders particularly over the last five years. With a second to the rise of anxiety disorders. And as a parent to a 16-year-old boy, I am paying attention to what he is looking at on social media and how that influences his thinking and his values.

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Ricardo Ocampo's avatar

Sorry to kind of jump to a different topic. I have been listening to the last episode of Ezra Klein on politics and I would really appreciate if you could write about young online gender segregation. Thank you for this amazing insights.

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Kristina Lerman's avatar

Interesting topic. We do see gender segregation in the body-image communities on Reddit: the "muscular ideal" (body building, weight lifting) communities are largely male and the "thin ideal" communities (dieting, eating disorders) are largely female. But segregation also extends to the political spectrum. We have not yet characterized it though.

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Shana Forta's avatar

Wait until kids steal their parents Ozempic or buy it from their friends to lose weight. Children don’t learn from the marketplace what they learn at home.

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Holly Evans's avatar

Hello - I'm new to After Babel (having read and loved Anxious Generation). Are there any interactive fora for parents trying to raise screen-minimal kids? For example, my 9 year old loves music, and the only way for him to listen to music is through my phone when we're driving. I'd love to find a music player that is internet-connected so I can put Apple Music on it, but without any other internet connectivity. I'd also love to find out about private high schools that have no-screen policies. Anyway - not expecting answers here, but wondering if anyone knows of a forum where people discuss these types of issues?

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Thoughtful Family Tech Tips's avatar

Screenstrong has a parent forum and a great informational Substack and podcast on this topic. https://screenstrong.substack.com/

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Wendi's avatar

My daughter also had an eating disorder, but her age is not on X, I think that we have all suffered from comparison as young girls. It’s easy to look at other girls now online and see their body types compared to ours. Plus the girls love getting together and eat junk food together which creates Guilt and then they get in a pattern of bulimia.

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Laurie Petrausch's avatar

I think we need to also address the fact that medical research where girls and women are concerned is sorely lacking in addition to the fact that historically we have hardly made girls or their health a priority. This reality is a roadblock to this research being seriously received or changes being implemented.

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RJ O’Connor's avatar

So happy for this post and a summary of the research findings in plain speak. What is troubling is this: “Although social media’s role in the youth mental health crisis remains a contested topic, its contributions to eating disorders are widely recognized.” Who exactly is contesting it? Wouldn’t that be the very ones who profit off these social media platforms? The ones who have the money to lobby congress so that laws regulating age verification and restrictions as well as content moderation never pass. I’m fairly sure your average mom and dad are not the ones contesting the harm done by social media.

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Kristina Lerman's avatar

you'd be surprise - there is still lots of skepticism in the research community about the causal link between social media and youth mental health crisis. Scientists are their own harshest critics.

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RJ O’Connor's avatar

I suppose it’s a good approach to be one’s harshest critic. It will curtail overreaction and premature conclusions giving the results credibility. Thanks for pointing that out.

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