SOCIAL MEDIA'S INFLUENCE
"You could fill your social media feed with the stuff that’s gonna feed your soul in a good way or the stuff that’s gonna tear you down in a bad way."
- Marci Warhaft
PRO #1 - GREAT COMMUNITIES
"Social media is a powerful tool because it can help a lot of people including me from recovering because when I started my social media account or when I started posting on my social media account and made a recovery account on Instagram, I didn’t think there was a lot of people who are also suffering like I do, that also have eating disorders. And for that moment, I realized that I am not alone and because of that, it helped me to build my relationship with food and recover from it. And to learn also how to love myself."
- Jan Pleje
CON #1 - COMPARISON TO OTHERS' HIGHLIGHT REELS
"It’s easy to fall into a trap of comparison. Comparing just me feeling really bad - I’ll feel really bad and then I’ll look at social media, which is obviously a highlight reel of someone’s life."
- Chloë Grande
"When you see yourself comparing yourself to someone’s account, or whatever it may be, it’s just not the whole picture - because mine’s not the whole picture. It’s keeping that in mind as well."
- Emily Formea
"Social media and Instagram models. Why is it that every woman has to look a certain type of way? Why is it that every girl is going for this “look”, but it’s not a realistic look. [...] Your weight does not define who you are."
- Steph Velasquez
PRO #2 - SPREAD AWARENESS AND ACCOUNTABILITY
"There are a lot of amazing social media accounts over there on Instagram that help you on how to spread awareness, on how to recover from your eating disorder or on how to think about yourself. That’s why social media really helped me and when I post there on my account, I am not just telling it to other people but it is also a reminder, or I apply it also to myself."
- Jan Pleje
"There are tons of body positivity, pro-healthy, body-image sites that you can go to, people you could follow. There’s a TON of it now."
- Marci Warhaft
CON #2 - FALSE SENSE OF REALITY
"First of all, everybody is airbrushed, everybody is--they do photoshoots after people have been dehydrated and first thing in the morning and you don’t see images of people being like, ‘just had a big meal, here’s me in a crop top!’ "
- Michelle Scott
"it promotes this psychology: how is this going to appear versus how am I actually experiencing this right now. So I think this has a lot to do with peoples’ body images and worrying about how I’m gonna look and how I’m gonna show up and things like that rather than experiencing the world through this awesome power of test and sight and sound and movement that we have."
- Michelle Scott
PRO #3 - EDUCATION
"There are a lot of really positive, like body positive, body neutrality, eating disorder recovery, Tik Tok accounts and Instagram accounts and Facebook pages and stuff like that out there."
- Michelle Scott
CON #3 - FOOD TRENDS
"At the same time, there is dieting culture and one trend that I hate so much is 'what I ate today'. I cannot stand that trend. I think some people have good intentions with it, but a lot of the time, I find that it’s just promoting diet culture or the amounts of food aren't really sustainable, or they’ll always focus on caloric intake, micros and macros."
- Chloë Grande
"‘what I eat in a day’ videos - I used to watch those constantly because I was somewhat just obsessed with food. I couldn’t stop thinking about it and trying to perfect it and such."
- Emily Formea