Social Media Promised Me Community, But Fuelled My Eating Disorder

I started using social media at 13-years-old in 2015. Being on the younger end of my grade, all my friends already had it. Downloading Facebook, Instagram and SnapChat felt like I finally belonged. Instagram, in particular, nourished this sense of belonging, allowing me to post memes and keep up with friends and celebrities in real-time.

Social media was fun, but little did I know, it would become a double-edged sword of toxicity and validation. 

By 14 I had stumbled down the rabbit hole of an eating disorder. I was one of the few brown girls in my grade. When I failed to live up to the model minority status of good grades and top ranks expected by my friends and my family, I decided that if I could fit in with the white girls, I could be something. 

At the time, I was desperate for a sip of the magic potion in front of me to ‘shrink down’, so I could be beautiful and belong.

So I restricted myself and over exercised, and while I became consumed by the number of calories and grams of lettuce in a sandwich, my weight began to change. 

The cultural barriers of being a South Asian woman growing up in Sydney made talking to my family about eating disorders almost impossible at times.  

When I was finally taken to the GP by a family member, my GP brushed it off, saying I’d outgrow this phase and I needed to eat more and exercise less. The isolation and shame was overwhelming.

So I turned to Instagram and YouTube, which made false promises of a ‘community’. 

Initially, this community saw me, heard me and validated what I was feeling. I spent hours every day watching, liking, and subscribing to content by creators who were either in recovery from their eating disorder or had already recovered.  

Much of this content featured these creators facing challenges where they ate foods they had been restricting due to fear — known as fear foods — and spoke about how weight gain in recovery, and after recovery, worked.

Some even had their family members in the video, helping them push past the difficulties of recovering from a mental illness. 

These videos and posts finally gave me the language to express what I was feeling — body dysmorphia, body checking, extreme hunger, restriction, and most importantly, recognising that the symptoms I exhibited were likely an eating disorder.

However, the validation and recognition I received came with toxic comparison with those who were still deep in their eating disorders claiming they were recovered and making videos like “what I eat in a day”, “eating 10,000 calories in a day challenge”, “cheat day challenge” and “my exercise routine”. 

Additionally, while I finally saw people who had eating disorders talk about their experiences, I never saw anyone who looked like me. My feed was filled with thin, white women who did not have the same cultural barriers in talking to their parents about their eating disorders.

In South Asian communities, eating disorders and mental health in general is considered taboo. So even if someone is struggling, talking about it publicly is uncommon. This certainly is changing now and I feel grateful in being able to share my own story. 

But at the time, I did not fully understand the interplay between culture and mental health and began to feel like I was not ‘sick enough’ or was undeserving to receive help. I had never been hospitalised. I didn’t even have anyone around me acknowledge that I was struggling, so how could I be? And if not a single brown person on my feed existed, then perhaps eating disorders don’t affect South Asians.

Social media caused a dichotomy of emotions; I felt validated and seen, yet so resentful and ignored by the so-called ‘community’ of recovery creators.

It took me years to recognise the toxicity of the content I watched daily and played in the background as I went to sleep. By that point my Instagram feed and YouTube recommended page, filled with disordered eating content and diet culture, felt inescapable. Even if I didn’t want to see the video, even if I hit “not interested”, the next video or post delivered by my algorithm gave me instructions on how to lose weight.

I know I’m not alone in this feeling. Research from the Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences found that TikTok users diagnosed with an eating disorder were 4,137 per cent and 322 per cent more likely to have their next video be eating disorder-related or diet-related, respectively, due to the algorithm.

When 1.1 million Australians are currently living with an eating disorder, and 10.5% have experienced an eating disorder at some point in their life, this is scary. 

However, 73 per cent of young people, like myself, have used social media as a tool for mental health support, and about 50% of young people with mental health challenges use social media as a substitute for professional support.

My experience as a woman of colour struggling with an eating disorder and searching for representation and help has shown me the need for more support for those living with eating disorders and body image issues. We need this now more than ever as since 2012, the prevalence of eating disorders in Australian young people aged 10-19 has risen by 86 per cent. 

Simply banning social media for those under 16 won’t solve these issues.

Between September 2023 and May 2024, myself and several experts participated in a Roundtable convened by Zoe Daniel MP and the Butterfly Foundation. We crafted over 20 recommendations to safeguard and bolster support for young people navigating social media in Australia. 

Our recommendations included amendments to the the Online Safety (Basic Online Safety Expectations) Determination 2022 and Online Safety Act 2021 to have a duty of care to protect the health and wellbeing of young peopleusing their platforms, requiring platforms to report risks and mitigation measures and holding platforms accountable with fines for non-compliance.

We also recommended that the platforms be transparent about algorithms, allow users to reset their algorithms and feature diverse physical appearances. We said funding is needed to provide education on body image and eating disorder harm minimisation content in schools and equip teachers and health professionals with these skills.  

If I had education at school on how to use social media and the opportunity to reset my algorithm and escape the swarm of “what I eat in a day” videos, my journey to healing from my eating disorder would’ve been much quicker and easier. 

When I tried seeking help, I was ungrateful, and kids in India had it harder, or that it was a phase I’d grow out of. When my GP said he didn’t diagnose me for three years because he thought it would affect my employability, social media gave me somewhere to go. 

The issue is not the age at which we use social media but the type of content we post. Even at 22, I still have periods when I need to delete social media. 

It is unfair to ask those struggling with mental illness to go into their settings and list out every word they don’t want to see or to click not interested on every post that’s triggering. It’s like asking someone with a broken leg to run a 5km.

Additionally, we need evidence-based solutions. Two weeks ago, the government presented the bill and, in the accompanying memorandum, conceded there is “currently no clear and agreed age at which children can safely use social media”. 

Multiple experts have expressed concerns about banning young people from social media platforms. In October, over 140 experts stated a ban would be too blunt to effectively address the risks of social media in an open letter to Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.

We need the government to fund health and education which includes cultural competency in health care. We need the government and multi billion dollar social media conglomerates to be accountable and regulate the type of content on the platforms and to be proactive in preventing harm.

Varsha Yajman is a university student and an Indian-Australian youth advocate, discussing the intersection between race, mental health and climate justice. She is on the Butterfly Foundation’s Lived Experience Group and has held positions as an organiser/coordinator in School Strike for Climate, the Australian Youth Climate Coalition and Sapna South Asian Climate Solidarity.