Social media fueling appearance anxiety, low self-esteem in youth, say experts

Lucknow: Mental health professionals in the city have noted an increase in the number of cases of children and adolescents struggling with appearance anxiety due to social media-driven comparison.In a recent case, a Class XI student was brought to a private psychiatrist after she became convinced that a part of her body was not developed properly. Although physically normal, she developed severe insecurity after receiving a negative comment about her appearance during an online relationship. Over time, she withdrew socially and developed suicidal thoughts. She required months of behavioural therapy to recover.“The condition she was suffering from was body dysmorphic disorder, where an individual becomes excessively preoccupied and worried about imagined or minor flaws,” said prof Adarsh Tripathi, former faculty member at King George’s Medical University, who treated the patient.Mental health experts said prolonged exposure to image-driven platforms is fuelling appearance anxiety. Many children become obsessed with selfies and filters and start judging their appearance after comparing themselves with fitness influencers.While these issues were earlier seen mainly in older teenagers, doctors are now also receiving cases in the 11-14-year age group.Parents approach specialists after noticing withdrawal from social life, low mood, anxiety, depression, and loss of appetite and interest in daily activities in their children due to appearance anxiety.Cosmetologist Dr Rama Srivastava said an increasing number of teenagers are approaching clinics to change skin tone, lips, nose shape or acne marks after seeing filtered images online.“Most of them are physically normal but suffer from distorted body image and low self-esteem. We refer such cases to psychological counselling,” she said.Prof Pawan Kumar Gupta, faculty member at KGMU’s psychiatry department, said he sees five to six such cases every month. He explained that social media algorithms aggravate the problem as once a child watches a few beauty or fitness videos, similar content starts dominating the feed.Psychologists said dependence on likes and comments on the photos they post on social media makes adolescents vulnerable as their identity is still developing. Warning signs include frequent mirror-checking, compulsive photo-editing and repeatedly checking comments on social media posts.