Music videos and soaps affect teens' body image

The "glamorous" lifestyles depicted in the media, especially music videos and soap operas, can impact body-image issues and may increase the risk of eating disorders in teens, according to new research. The study of nearly 1,500 adolescents from 8th grade to 11th grade found that media pressures increased the risk of striving for excessive thinness in girls; boys who watched music videos were at higher risk of developing an obsession for lean, highly musculed physiques. According to Marika Tiggemann, one of the study's authors, "There's good evidence that the female ideal (depicted by the media) has become progressively thinner, so that typical female models are now often as much as 20 percent underweight (with 15 percent underweight a diagnostic criterion for anorexia nervosa)." Additionally, children's action figures "have become more muscular than even extreme bodybuilders." It appears that the type of content, rather than the total time spent watching television, was a more accurate indicator of unhealthy body image or attitudes that might heighten risks for eating disorders.

Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, June 2005