Ep. 32 Internet Use and Weight Dissatisfaction in Teens

Imagine the mental weight lifted from the shoulders of our adolescent girls once they realize that they are more than the images they see on the internet. 

I present a study conducted in Australia, which sheds light on how constant exposure to the internet and social media fuels teenagers' discontent with their body weight and amplifies their quest for perceived thinness. These platforms promote unrealistic beauty standards and can increase body weight dissatisfaction, primarily due to the comparisons teenagers make between their own lives and the ones they see online.

Tune in to learn more about this study and what you can do to help avoid this. 

I’m Dr. Jenny Gourgari—pediatric endocrinologist, certified in obesity medicine and a health coach.
After helping hundreds of teens struggling with their weight and hormones, I’ve created a whole new path by doing what most programs miss: balance puberty hormones naturally and create habits that actually last.

Here's what makes this different:
✅ No dieting. No calorie counting. No shame.
✅ No more food fights between parents and teens.
✅ No weight obsession—just healthy habits
✅ Real science behind how puberty hormones affect weight
✅ A safe, supportive approach that prevents eating disorders

Because when teens understand their hormones and get the right support, they don’t just lose weight—they gain strength, energy, confidence, and freedom!

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:08):
This is the Lifestyle in Weight Loss for Teens
podcast.
If you are a mom and want tohelp your child who is
struggling to lose weight, youare in the right place.
If you are looking for healthylifestyle tips, Dr Gorgary is
here to help you understand thescience around safe weight loss
in teens and children, Becausewhat works for adult weight loss
is not always the best forchildren.

(00:29):
This podcast is for educationalpurposes only.
Dr Gorgary does not providemedical, psychological or
nutrition therapy advice.
You should not use thisinformation to diagnose or treat
any health problems withoutconsulting your own medical
practitioner and now your host,Dr Jenny Gorgary.

Speaker 2 (00:52):
Hello, welcome to another episode of the Lifestyle
in Weight Loss for Teens.
This is Dr Jenny Gorgary, andin today's episode, I will dive
into a topic in regards tospending time on social media
and the internet, and what isthis effect on adolescent girls'

(01:14):
weight satisfaction and drivefor thinness.
I have talked a lot about therecommendations for social media
use, which by American Academyof Pediatrics and American
Obstetrics Society is less thantwo hours per day, and part of

(01:35):
this is exposure to social mediahas a negative emotional effect
and also can have a negativeeffect on how teenagers feel
about their body.
Now, why does this happen?
This happens because when yougo on Facebook, when you go on

(01:58):
Instagram, when you go on theinternet, and you see all these
people having these great photos, having these great lives, you
kind of inevitably compare thatto your own life and you may
feel you're not as beautiful,you don't have as beautiful body

(02:19):
, you're not as lucky, you'renot as happy, you're not as thin
, or you don't have long hair,you don't have blue eyes, and
all these comparisons that go onthat, as a result, can have a
negative effect on yourself-esteem, can have a negative
effect on your mood and how youfeel and can even lead to this

(02:46):
unhealthy behavior in regards toyour eating.
So形에서 우리 Risk으로.
This is a very big topic andI'm just going to present one
small part of that social mediaeffect and, in particular, this
was a study that was done a fewyears ago, but I think it is

(03:08):
still relevant.
It was published in 2010.
The actual title of thismanuscript is the Internet and
Adolescent Girls' WeightSatisfaction and Drive for
Thinness.
This was a very interestingstudy.
It was done in Australia.
The leading author is MarieKatigeeman, and what they did is

(03:29):
they asked teenager girlsbetween the ages of 13 to 18
years of age.
They asked them how long andhow much time they spent on the
internet, what kind of pagesthey view and all that.
And back then, as I said, in2010, I assume, facebook was

(03:51):
just not as big as it is today,so maybe some of this effect, if
anything, are underrepresentedcompared to what's going on in
2023.
So they asked them to say howmuch time they spent on the
internet and, at the same time,they asked them to fill out

(04:14):
questionnaires that assess theirimpression of what is their
weight satisfaction.
So, for example, they wouldtell them I think I have a good
body.
What is your scale?
From a scale from one to five,how would you rate the sentence?
Similar questions like that.
So they would try to understandhow satisfied they were with

(04:36):
their weight.
They would also ask themquestionnaire to understand
whether they wanted to bethinner.
So, for example, they would askthem that I am preoccupied with
a desire to be thinner andsimilar questions from a scale
from one to six how do you feelabout that?

(04:57):
They would also ask themquestions about how they feel
about comparing themselves toother people.
For example, in socialsituations.
I feel that I compare my bodywith how other bodies look like
and similar to that.
And also they would ask themquestions that had to do with

(05:23):
how much they feel that what isrepresented in the media is
actually the ideal situation.
So, for example, they would saythat I would like my body to
look like the bodies of thepeople that I see in the movies.
So whatever they are seeing onthe internet or on the movies or

(05:45):
in the social media, they wantthat because they think this is
the ideal situation.
They feel this is the idealimage and then they want that.
So once they put all that datatogether, they wanted to see
whether there is a relationshipbetween the time they were

(06:09):
spending on the Internet andalso how they felt about their
body weight and their bodysatisfaction and the ideals that
they had.
So they total was 156Australian female high school
students, so the average age was14.9 years of age, and they

(06:34):
found that the girls that spendmore time on the Internet, they
had more strong relationshipwith internalizing the thin
ideal they see on social media.
In other words, they wereexposed more time on the social

(06:55):
media.
They felt that this is theideal way to live your life and
be like in this certain body andnot in the body that.
They had worse weightdissatisfaction, like they
didn't like their own body.
They had body image concernsand they also had more

(07:18):
comparison.
They had more the tendency tocompare their lives with the
lives that they were seeing onthe Internet, on Facebook and on
Google and all those things.
Now they did not have all thedetails of like how much time
they spent on each page and allthat, but they did get a good

(07:39):
sense of having more exposure onthe Internet can give you more
body weight dissatisfaction, cangive you more drive to want to
be thinner like the people yousee on the Internet and those
effects, the researchers feltthat they were driven because

(08:03):
they were comparing themselvesto what they were seeing.
So if you see somebody onFacebook or on Instagram and you
just admire them withoutcomparing that to yourself, that
may not necessarily be aboutproblem, like that may not be an
issue.

(08:23):
But if you see someone who isvery different than where you
are and instead of admiring themfor their uniqueness because we
all come in different shapes,in different sizes and different
colors and beauty is not in onesize and one color and one

(08:45):
length of hair or one color ofeyes and all this like beauty is
multi-dimensional and if youcan accept that and see that,
then this is great.
But if you spend time on socialmedia and you just compare
yourself and you want to be whatyou see there and this is what
happens very frequently withespecially teenagers I mean, it

(09:10):
happens with adults too, butteenagers are more susceptible
to these influences than theycan have all these negative
effects on this body image issue.
So one of the main reasons thatI keep talking again and again
about the limiting social mediaexposure or be more careful what

(09:37):
you're, where you are spendingyour time and how are you using
the information you see onsocial media in your daily life?
How does that affect you?
It's because I know that it canhave all these negative effects
.
So I know it is not easy to stopbeing on social media.

(10:02):
You can, just it's not easy.
Well, the fact that it's noteasy doesn't mean it cannot
happen.
And also, when we say limitsocial media, we don't say don't
ever go on Facebook, don't evergo on Instagram, and even a
small decrease can have apositive effect.
Like, for example, if you arenow spending five hours and six

(10:23):
hours, which I know I hear itall the time from the families
that I work with that they spenta lot of time on social media.
Even if you can cut back anhour, half a minute, 15 minutes,
maybe the time that you arecoming back from school, maybe
the time before sleep, maybe thetime in the afternoon, first of

(10:46):
all, you can take back all thattime and use it in a more
productive way.
But slowly you can get in thehabit to not be all the time
influenced by that and try tolimit this effect, because the
more the exposure, you're morelikely to not feel good about

(11:06):
yourself, to not feel good aboutyour body to keep comparing
yourself with all these imagesyou see there that are not
necessarily true, and why dothat to yourself?
So consider having aconversation as a family around
this topic.
Evaluate what are your feelingswhen you see that.
How do you compare yourself tothe images you see, and then

(11:34):
start to examine thatrelationship and see whether you
can do something to improvethat.
That was all I had for youtoday.
I hope this was helpful.
Share this episode with afriend if you think it was
helpful, and I'm going to betalking more about this in
future episodes because I knowit is a big topic.

(11:55):
Take care of you all.
I'll talk to you soon.

Speaker 1 (11:58):
If you enjoyed listening to this podcast, I
invite you to come check out theLift program.
It's Dr Gorgary's 12-weekcoaching program for teens and
their moms, where we take allthis information, we apply it to
your daily life and we worktogether so your teenager learns
how to create a healthylifestyle so they can feel
happier, more confident, lessstressed and love their body

(12:18):
again.
Visit the website atlifestyleforteanscom and click
on the work with me and theresources to learn more about
this program and get free helpto start this journey right away
.
Thanks for tuning in and we'llcatch you in the next episode of
lifestyle and weight loss forteens.