How Do Health-oriented Websites Impact Women’s Drive for Thinness?

Current technologies and the internet offer many opportunities for managing our physical well-being, including the management of health status, weight, and fitness. The ySKILLS project focuses on the effects of technology usage on the well-being – including physical well-being – of young people, with a specific focus on the role of digital skills. This investigation builds on recent evidence, which explains the mechanism that can lead to the beneficial effects of technology usage or which can result in harm to one’s health. By understanding these mechanisms, ySKILLS newly focuses on the role of digital skills and examines if and how they may disrupt the harmful processes and enhance positive outcomes.

One of our recent studies which helped to inform the ySKILLS investigations specifically focused on for whom and for what reasons visits to health-oriented websites were linked with the development of eating disorders – thus being harmful to physical well-being. The study focused on young women who visit websites that provide information on weight loss, exercise, and nutrition, with tips and advice on how to achieve diverse health-related goals. Despite the potential benefits, such websites may also display content that promotes unhealthy thinness and eating restraint, such as photos that depict extremely thin women and tips to achieve the “ideal” appearance. Such content may be detrimental to body image, inducing negative feelings and body-related discontent. This can be reflected in a more intense drive for thinness, which is characterized by eating restraint and preoccupation with body shape and weight. The drive for thinness is linked with the subsequent development of eating disorders, which have a detrimental impact on health (De Pasquale et al., 2013) and pose a risk to physical well-being. It is important to understand the factors that contribute to the drive for thinness, especially among adolescent girls and young women, who are more vulnerable to the development of eating disorders. Therefore, in our recent study of the subject (see https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/17/7/2416/htm), we focused on individual factors that, in the context of health-oriented websites, contribute to the drive for thinness for young women (Kvardova et al., 2020).

Our investigation was not particularly new in its focus. The emphasis that our society puts on appearance and its effect on women’s body image (i.e., how women feel about their own body) has been substantially debated over the past years. Notably, the media displays portraits of unrealistically attractive and thin women. The propagation of this type of appearance has proven to decrease women’s body satisfaction (Huxley et al., 2015). As previous studies have shown, women internalize body-appearance norms that are promoted in the media (i.e., accept them as personal standards; Omori et al., 2017). However, the “ideal body” may be unattainable for most, and the endorsement of such an appearance can induce negative feelings. For some, negative body image can even translate into unhealthy eating in an attempt to get a better-looking figure (Juarez et al., 2012).

What has changed in the past decades is that the internet has become a prominent source for content that depicts women with thin and attractive bodies. In the context of negative media effects, exposure to this type of online content on social media and pro-eating disorder websites was found to be linked to lower body satisfaction and eating disorder symptoms (Fardouly & Vartanian, 2016; Harper et al., 2008). However, other sites can harm women’s well-being. Our study focused on websites oriented toward weight loss, exercise, and nutrition. These online platforms may promote health, but they also endorse thinness, unhealthy dieting, and eating restraint, and display content that is related to body dissatisfaction and eating disturbances (Boepple & Thompson, 2014; Smahel et al., 2018). Hence, they can pose a risk to women and their body-related attitudes. In our study, we focused specifically on how this can happen and who is most vulnerable in this process.

We examined how health-related websites affect young women’s drive for thinness. The study comprised of 445 young adult women, aged 18 to 29, who visited websites that focused on weight loss, exercise, and eating habits. We examined the perceived online social support from health-oriented websites and the link to the drive for thinness in women. The health-oriented websites can provide social support from other visitors, mostly in the form of empathy, expressed positive emotions, and relevant information regarding their goals, like tips for losing weight or exercise advice (Hwang et al., 2010). We also examined the role of neuroticism as an individual factor that can induce the drive for thinness. Women who have higher rates of neuroticism frequently experience negative emotions, stress, anxiety, and emotional instability (Martin & Racine, 2017), all of which can make them prone to the drive for thinness. We also examined the internalization of body-appearance standards as a mechanism through which perceived social support and neuroticism affect women’s drive for thinness.

Our study showed that the more women perceived support from other website visitors, the more they internalized the body-appearance norms endorsed on the websites, which in turn increased their drive for thinness. Users of health-oriented websites may share the same conception for how the ideal body looks. When women receive needed support from those users, they are likely to adopt the same idea for how the perfect body should look and, more importantly, how their own bodies should look. Then, they may experience a desire to attain such a body (i.e., a drive for thinness). The link between the social support, internalization, and heightened drive for thinness can be explained by the Social Identity Theory (Tajfel & Turner, 2010): if we receive needed support from people in our social group, we can perceive our membership in this group as more important and, therefore, internalize the norms that are shared within the group (Chiu et al., 2015; Smahel et al., 2018). In the case of health-oriented websites, support regarding weight loss, exercise, and eating-related goals could lead to the internalization of body-appearance standards that endorse unattainably thin women figures.

The results for the potential negative role of social support can have implications for prevention programs that are focused on negative body image and eating disturbances and intervention. We discovered that health-oriented websites, not generally recognized as a risk to women’s well-being, may increase their drive for thinness, which can pose a threat to their health. Therefore, health-oriented websites should be acknowledged with the understanding that they may play a negative role for women.

However, our results showed that, apart from the negative impact of social support in terms of the internalization, support from the visitors of health-related websites can also have a positive effect on women. Though the perceived social support induced the internalization of body-appearance norms that promoted women’s drive for thinness, we can suppose that positive feeling, support, and the relatedness that women might have experienced on websites increased their overall well-being and, thus, decreased their drive for thinness. The findings of our study suggest a dual role for perceived social support, both as risk and protective factors.

Women’s neuroticism was associated with higher internalization and a higher drive for thinness in our study. Negativity that neurotic women often experience can make them susceptible to dissatisfaction with their bodies (MacNeill et al., 2017) or even experience eating-disorder symptoms (Cervera et al., 2003). Our study supported the aforementioned presumption, showing that heightened neuroticism resulted in the drive for thinness among women visitors of health-related websites. We also found that neuroticism induced the process of the internalization of body-appearance norms and, consequently, increased their drive for thinness. This finding implies that prevention should focus on reducing women’s stress and negative emotions in order to prevent the drive for thinness and the internalization from the health-related websites.

What does this mean in the context of the ySKILLS investigations?

In summary, our study showed that technology usage by young women may result in lower physical well-being and that the whole process is influenced by the tendency to internalize online content. What does this mean in the context of the ySKILLS investigations? Other studies showed that digital skills may serve as a protective factor against potentially harmful appearance-focused online content. For instance, as the study by McLean et al. (2016) showed, critical thinking plays a moderating role in the context of negative media effects on body image and mitigates the harmful impact of online content that endorses thin female bodies. Taking these results together, we can understand the role of digital skills in the link between health-related online content and physical well-being. We can presume that critical thinking skills would moderate the process of internalization that was shown as influential in the development of the drive for thinness in our study. Simply put, those with a higher level of skill may more critically evaluate information related to weight loss or dieting, including the body-appearance norms, and subsequently resist the need for a thin body, which is connected to harmful behavior (e.g., following drastic dieting tips). Following this line of reasoning, we formulated our hypotheses and we will be testing the protective role of higher digital skills on physical well-being in the ySKILLS project. Specifically, in an upcoming longitudinal study, we will ask about the negative effects of using fitness- and dieting-related online information and examine whether digital skills buffer the potential harm to children’s and adolescents’ physical health. Moreover, we will push forward knowledge related to these processes and outcomes by focusing on younger children (12-17), who may be particularly vulnerable to harm from health-related websites. Because prevention of potential harm is highly important in this sensitive age, we believe that the ySKILLS findings will be especially beneficial and that they will have implications for both theory and praxis.

References

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