Your Teen and Eating Disorders

As unfortunate as it is, you need to think about your teen and eating disorders, because people are starting to worry about their bodies at a younger and younger age. In fact, about 15 percent of young women suffer from some kind of eating disorder––most commonly anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, or binge eating. While most adults have more experience with their own bodies, most teens are still getting used to major physical changes and raging hormones. This leaves them more susceptible to the lure of an effective way of keeping weight off.

One survey determined that 40 percent of 1st, 2nd, and 3rd grade girls wish they were thinner, and 80 percent of 10 year old girls are afraid of getting fat in the future. By the time girls hit 6th grade, most of them are already seriously concerned about their weight and their appearance. The pressure on women to be attractive is enormous, and for good reason: men have been just as brainwashed as women to believe that women can only be attractive if they are thin. A recent scandal has shown that what the modeling world believes to be “plus-sized” is what the majority of people would consider a normal weight, which just shows how skewed the mentality on health and weight has become.

Think about your teen and eating disorders symptoms that he or she might be exhibiting. As hard as adolescence is for everyone, the Information Age has made it even easier for young people to compare themselves to omnipresent celebrities and supermodels. Plus, the competition to look good extends to social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace, as you can now put up pictures of yourselves and compare your pictures to those of your friends. When your photo albums are no longer private, you feel more pressure to make them look as good as they can look.

When teens get thinner, they are usually complimented on it. What this does in some teens is convince them that they can get even more compliments if they could just be thinner. By the time people start to tell them that they are getting too thin, they have already been damaging themselves with an eating disorder, and it gets hard to change their mind about what they’re doing. Eating disorders are as much a psychological as a physical condition, where the teen is convinced that they are still not thin enough, even if they are practically skin and bones.

The main causes that can contribute to your teen and eating disorders include societal values, culture, and personal issues like trauma or lack of self-confidence. Most of the time, it’s impossible not to compare yourself to a celebrity. Even when it’s just meant to be a joke or playful, if someone seems to be infatuated with a celebrity, you start to think that that’s how you ought to look. In addition, physical and verbal abuse often causes teens to react by trying to control some aspect of their lives: namely, their bodies. If your teen is suffering from any eating disorders, support him or her and seek professional help immediately.