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Psychologist and body-image researcher Charlotte Markey joins us to discuss myths and misinformation about body image, how chronic illness and pain affect perceptions of our bodies, the body positivity vs. body neutrality debate, the potential body-image harms of social media (and how to mitigate them), how the discourse about GLP-1 weight-loss drugs is influencing people’s body image, and more.
Charlotte Markey, Ph.D., is a professor of psychology and chair of the Health Sciences Department at Rutgers University (Camden). Dr. Markey received her doctorate in psychology from the University of California (Riverside) and began conducting research on eating behavior and body image over 25 years ago. She has published over 100 book chapters and articles in peer-reviewed journals. The Body Image Book for Girls: Love Yourself and Grow Up Fearless was published in 2020 to enthusiastic reviews and was a recommended book by A Mighty Girl. It was followed up with Being You: The Body Image Book for Boys (2022), the only book about body image for boys. Body Positive: Understanding and Improving Body Image in Science and Practice (co-edited with Drs. Elizabeth Daniels and Meghan Gillen; Cambridge University Press; 2018) offers a scholarly approach to improving body image. Her newest book is Adultish: The Body Image Book for Life (2024).
Dr. Markey writes for U.S. News and World Report, Psychology Today, and a variety of other publications. Her research has garnered widespread media attention, and she has been featured in and interviewed by publications including The New York Times, The Economist, The Today Show, ABC News, Time Magazine, The Washington Post, ScienceDaily, and NBC News.
Resources and References
Contains affiliate links to Bookshop.org, where I earn a small commission for any purchases made.
Christy’s second book, The Wellness Trap: Break Free from Diet Culture, Disinformation, and Dubious Diagnoses and Find Your True Well-Being
Subscribe on Substack for extended interviews and more
Charlotte's newest book, Adultish: The Body Image Book for Life
The Body Image Book for Girls: Love Yourself and Grow Up Fearless
Body Positive: Understanding and Improving Body Image in Science and Practice
Reuters report on people stopping GLP-1s within 2 years
Christy’s online course, Intuitive Eating Fundamentals
Transcript
Disclaimer: The below transcription is primarily rendered by AI, so errors may have occurred. The original audio file is available above.
Christy Harrison: So Charlotte, welcome to the show. I'm so excited to talk with you.
Charlotte Markey: I'm so happy to be here.
Christy Harrison: You're a body image scientist, which sounds like a fascinating career. I'm kind of jealous. How did you get interested in doing this kind of work and make that your life's work?
Charlotte Markey: I think I've always been interested in body image. I can't actually remember a time when I wasn't. I think that probably started in my childhood because I was a ballet dancer growing up, and I think that had a real impact on me because there was so much discussion of bodies and so much critique of bodies. And it was a pretty dysfunctional time in the dance world in the eighties and early nineties. So there was a lot of stuff to be learned, none of it very good. So I think a lot of that stayed with me growing up.
And then I came to psychology in college, probably the way a lot of people do, which is you take an intro class, you already have another major, but you're like, "Oh wait, this is way more fun and interesting." And so when I changed my major, I didn't know what I was going to do with psychology. And ultimately I ended up studying body image. And it's almost 30 years later and still doing it.
Christy Harrison: What was sort of your own personal history with body image in that journey? Because it sounds like it was probably difficult in childhood dealing with the stuff in the ballet world. Did you ever have an eating disorder or other sort of disordered eating or major challenge with body image, or were you able to kind of escape some of the worst of it.
Charlotte Markey: I may have escaped the worst of it, but I wouldn't say that most of my adolescence, even into my early adulthood, was great in this regard. In addition to sort of the ballet experience and just the time, it wasn't really a great time for body image in terms of the cultural messaging. Not that it's perfect now, but it's, I think, perhaps slightly better, at least. And I also grew up in one of those homes with mom who is constantly dieting, is still dieting, and just a lot of focus on appearance.
So I think I learned from a really young age that how you look is important and you should work on this. This is a project. And for a couple years in high school, I really dipped into some disordered eating. I don't know exactly that it was ever diagnosed because that wasn't really done. You know, 1989, 1990. And then I really am not sure what pulled me out of it, to be honest. I don't know, maybe I finally got hungry enough. I was a restrictor, so I did have other friends who engaged in disordered eating, and some of that didn't go well. I had one friend who ended up hospitalized. That was a cautionary tale of sorts.
I do vaguely remember some doctors saying something about my fertility being at risk and that resonating. But I don't really talk a lot in a very forthright way about my personal history because although it's relevant, I also feel like it's just very common. And so many young women experience some version of disordered eating that I'm not sure that I'm all that special in that regard.
Christy Harrison: I'm curious to talk about your research, and what you found with regard to body image, speaking of that commonness. What are some of the common features of people's struggles with body image that you've identified?
Charlotte Markey: A lot of my work has focused on what things influence body image and then what are some of the consequences. So trying to understand essentially, points of intervention and also why we need to intervene. So I've done all kinds of work across the years, and not surprisingly, mothers are an important influence. Parents and families growing up are an important influence. And we see that one of the first studies I ever published looked at five year old girls, and we found that 20% of them were exhibiting some signs of body dissatisfaction, and that was predicted by their mother's body dissatisfaction. So that work's been replicated now and even done with younger girls, three and four year olds.
But I think obviously had some personal relevance to me, but also was just one of the first studies back in the early two thousands to show this starts really young. And that's really important because so much of the body image research has grown up alongside the eating disorder research. So a lot of that historically has focused on adolescent girls. So it's important to realize this is not an adolescent concern or not just an adolescent concern.
Christy Harrison: Yeah, it starts so young. I'm really struck by that and worried by that a little bit as a mom of a two and a half year old. I'm like, "It's coming." It's already very close to that time and I know there's some research showing that kids as young as, I think, two or three are sort of aware of body differences and start to have preferences for smaller bodies over larger bodies.
Charlotte Markey: Yeah, absolutely. And I think it is important to be aware of it as a parent, to be aware of it as anyone who interacts with young kids, though, that little ears are listening, they're watching us. So I think that's important to always be mindful of.
Christy Harrison: How do you think parents can, and other people who interact with kids can set a good tone for kids at this young stage and maybe also older as well?
Charlotte Markey: It's really important for parents to be aware of, I think, some of their own concerns. Most of us adults are not perfect. We have our own baggage when we go into parenting. And so it's at least important to be aware of what it is so that you don't pass it on to your kids, I think. And we want to be really careful how we talk about our own bodies and other people's bodies because young girls, like five year old girls in that study from 25 years ago, I've never been convinced that they had completely internalized what body dissatisfaction is as much as just they're mimicking perhaps what they're seeing at home.
So are they really just sort of repeating the language that they're getting at home? Like "I think it's important to diet" or "I should be aware of my weight." Things like that. I think we have to be really careful. And I know for me, when I became a mom, too, I was always thinking, like, "I am going to do this different, and I am not going to say anything bad about my body ever in front of my kids." And it doesn't mean I don't ever think it or I don't want to say it, but I do think across, now it's been almost 19 years of parenting, and I think it makes a really big difference.
Christy Harrison: And probably not to make comments on their bodies, too.
Charlotte Markey: Yeah. And to really broach the issues thoughtfully. And kids are always getting bigger. Like, that's their job, is to keep growing and so to be really careful how that's framed and to frame it positively. So I'm sure your daughter is outgrowing clothes every six months or something. I think a lot of girls at a very young age start to feel like, "Oh, my gosh, is this a problem? Is this a bad thing?" And if you frame it in terms of this is so exciting and your body is so amazing, and look at all the cool things you can do now. Now you can write a bike, or now you're learning how to swim, whatever it may be, that I think that that's just a much better framework for talking about bodies and development.
Christy Harrison: So talking a little bit about your new book, Adultish. It's geared towards young adults, but I think it's got wisdom and important information for people of all ages. One of the things you talk about in the book is myths and misconceptions about body image or pieces of misinformation that you see floating around online and out in the world. Can you talk a little bit about those misconceptions?
Charlotte Markey: I think one of the most common misconceptions when it comes to body image is just that if you have a positive body image, that means you feel great all the time, that it's rainbows and butterflies all the time for you, and no one feels perfect about themselves all the time because we are responding to the world around us. It's normal, it's mentally healthy to take in some information from the world around us. And I like to use the analogy of if you just took a test and you know you didn't do well on it at school, and you thought, oh, well, maybe I need to study more, or maybe I'm not that great at math. That's like a normal response to having that kind of an experience, that something bad happened. You consider that in how you view yourself.
And I think the same is true of our bodies. If you feel sick and you don't feel well, then you're not thinking like, "Oh, my God, my body's amazing," You feel kind of like, "Wow, this sucks." Or if you are an athlete and you've lost a game. You're not usually thinking like, "Wow, I'm the best athlete in the world. Look at all these cool things my body can do." You're responding to the information that the world is providing for you. So that means that we're not all going to always feel positively about our bodies, but we can still have, overall, a positive body image.
Christy Harrison: Got it. And I think it's interesting to see on social media or in popular discourse about this stuff. There's been, I think, a lot of push in recent years to stop talking about body positivity as much and to start aiming for things like body neutrality. What are your thoughts on that?
Charlotte Markey: I totally appreciate some of the response to body positivity, and we can dig into that if you're interested. But I mean, as a psychologist, I think it's analogous to talking about sort of some continuum almost from depression to happiness. So certainly as a psychologist, I don't want people to be depressed. If they feel content and acceptance and sort of a sense of calm in their life, that's wonderful. I think a lot of us want to feel those things, but I also want them to actually feel happiness sometimes.
And I think the same is true when we talk about body image. I want people to not feel dissatisfaction or upset or at war with their body. I am very happy if they feel acceptance and contentedness about their body, but all the better if they actually feel good, even if it's just sometimes or really can feel some appreciation and sort of joy in terms of what their body allows them to do.
Christy Harrison: This is probably an obvious question, and I'm sure people can just answer this themselves because it's like you feel better, so of course it's better. But is there any scientific research on how body positivity and feeling actively good about your body might be protective or any links there?
Charlotte Markey: So there's very little research on body neutrality. I should say maybe a handful of studies. We have started to do some work in my lab at Rutgers. But in terms of feeling more positive about your body, I mean, it's obviously protective when it comes to a lot of mental health concerns, including anxiety, depression, eating disorders, substance use disorders even. But it's just an important part of our identity and our mental health, so we want that to be as positive as possible, I think.
Christy Harrison: What do you think about the discourse about body positivity and sort of the framing around it, too? As a body image researcher, I'm sure your experience of and sort of work with body image and body positivity is very different than kind of what gets disseminated out there online and then backlash to that as well. And a lot of people feeling like body positivity as a trend or movement or whatever it might be sort of let them down and there's been pieces now with Ozempic and all the other GLP-1s being like, is body positivity over? Did it ever really exist? I'm interested in your thoughts on that.
Charlotte Markey: Yeah, there's so much there. We could talk about all this for hours, I think. But the way I see it, again, I want people to feel generally good about themselves. That doesn't mean every second of every day, and that extends, of course, to their body image. But are there problems with it as a quote, unquote, movement? I mean, no movement is really perfect. Probably when we're talking about a movement, we're usually referring to trying to raise awareness about an issue that we think matters. So I think the body positivity movement has done that to a certain extent and is continuing to try to do that to a certain extent. I appreciate that some people feel like it's a big ask. That's what sometimes people will say to me. They're like, "You're asking too much of me. I'm not going to feel good. The standards are crazy. How can I?"
And I get that, I do. And I think that's worth exploring kind of at the individual level. Why do you feel that way? And why are those standards something you've internalized, and how can you push back against that? So there's a lot there that individuals can kind of dig into. I think criticism that comes up most often, at least prior to sort of the wave of ozempic and other GLP-1s, is the idea that body positivity hasn't supported the people that need it the most, maybe, which is people in larger bodies who receive the most discrimination and bias and have their daily lives affected really negatively because people have idealized certain bodies for so long.
And I appreciate it if people feel like, "Well, this movement isn't about me, like, you're not fighting for me enough." I think there's some truth to that. But I also think that the way I see it anyway, is body positivity was never about certain groups. It was about everyone having a right to feel good in their own skin. And that's, I guess, sort of how I view it and how I still want to advocate for it, that everyone deserves, that everyone should feel good in their own skin. And of course we should work for systemic change that makes that easier. As a psychologist, I think about it more at the individual level but it's complicated, right. There's a lot going on here, not just the individual, but also the systemic level.
Christy Harrison: And there's an interplay between the two. And I think the systemic can really affect the individual and vice versa as well. I think the standards that people internalize are coming from the systemic level, that people are brought up aspiring to the thin ideal and wanting to fit into eurocentric beauty standards and whatever else that's being opposed, and also ableist beauty standards as well. And then feeling like they fall short of those and judging themselves the way we're all conditioned to judge ourselves in society based on this perceived lack. And so I think it's harder for people who are further outside of that ideal to feel positive about their bodies. And yet it's possible, right? It's nothing unheard of. It's just less accessible perhaps, or it takes more effort and resilience and kind of certain circumstances maybe to help achieve that.
Charlotte Markey: I think that's absolutely right. But I wouldn't be willing, I guess, to say, "Well, if you're really far from these ideals, which are just socially constructed, that you should give up, you shouldn't even aim to feel good about yourself." Because we really want to try to disentangle our sense of our own bodies from those ideals. We don't want them to be the only thing really contributing to that sense of self. I mean, comparisons are very natural and very human, and most of us do it, but we really, I think, need to work on that at the individual level.
And of course, systemically, we do also want to have greater representation and we do want to work towards changing the ideals, and we do want to have more conversation about bodies come in different shapes and sizes and colors and abilities, and that's what's normal. So if we aren't looking like anyone in particular, that's not a failing on our part because that's not how we're supposed to look.
Christy Harrison: Yeah, I think that's really helpful and sort of puts it in perspective. I think probably the resistance to body positivity at some level is "Well, this is just another standard I have to meet. This is just another impossible thing that I now have to beat myself up for not being able to do" versus what you're saying feels far more generous. "You deserve this, and let's try to support you in accessing this in whatever way that's possible."
Charlotte Markey: And body image, the way I define it, just most researchers that I know define it, is really multifaceted. It's not just "I feel good about my hair or my thighs". It's like, "I am respecting of myself. I want to take care of myself. I have self compassion. I am grateful for this body that allows me to be in the world." So those are not necessarily constructs that are tied to an ideal per se. So I think that those are the things that we can nurture. And everyone should nurture those things. People should, I hope, feel some sense of not being at war with their body, not just being content, but feeling like they want to try to do what's best for themselves.
Christy Harrison: And I think that's a really helpful framing for anyone with chronic illness or disabilities. And I have multiple chronic health conditions myself and have definitely felt at various times like I was at war with my body or my body was letting me down or that I wanted to totally change what was going on in my body and felt failed by it and all of that. And it sounds like what you're saying is not that, again, that it has to work and function perfectly according to some ideal, but that just, you don't even have to feel great in your skin all the time, but can you access a level of self compassion or the motivation to care for your body and to do what feels good to it and to do the things that you need to do to feel better?
Charlotte Markey: That's exactly right. And I've experienced chronic illness similar to you, I think, and a lot of people will experience body problems. And I don't mean eating disorders, but chronic illness or issues with fertility if you're a woman or there are many ways, frankly, that are not even appearance focused, where we can feel let down by our bodies and it's okay to feel that again, that's a response to the circumstances that are not what we want. But there are different ways that we can move forward. When you hit that, you can say, "My body is letting me down, I have these symptoms and I give up." And I think a lot of people do that, at least for a little bit, because it's just really difficult in our healthcare system.
But then what I guess I would hope for people is that they ultimately decide, "Well, I need to talk to another expert, or I need to try a different medication, or I need to do whatever that will help me feel as good as I can, both in terms of functionality and in terms of just being comfortable in my own skin, feeling like I can sort of live the best life I can, given this is the physical form I have to do it in."
Christy Harrison: I think a lot about wellness culture and the pressures that it puts on people to constantly optimize and constantly be chasing down this, this never aging body, never changing body, totally able body, all the things that are really inaccessible to the vast majority of us. And I think that sort of push to always be seeking. I know for me, when I was first dealing with chronic illnesses that weren't diagnosed and trying to figure out what was going on, I was very drawn to self diagnosis and alternative medicine and Internet research and finding communities of people that were DIYing different things, trying lots of different wellnessy, crunchy types of things to feel better. And I now see that from such a different perspective where I see the desperation, I see the desire to care for myself, but that it was channeled in these ways that were ultimately unhelpful, and I was trying things that were not evidence based and that weren't right for me.
And it ultimately, I think, made the situation worse for me. And I know that happens with a lot of people. I have a chapter about dubious diagnoses in my book, The Wellness Trap. And I talked to a lot of people who were given some sort of alternative medicine diagnosis that turned out to be false and kind of traced what was really going on for them and where they sort of were let down by those dubious diagnoses and what was actually needed to heal or to start to find healing in some cases, not that people were fully healed. I'm just curious for your thoughts on that.
What you're saying about seeking out second opinions or continuing to care for yourself and continuing to look for solutions, I think for some people, it can also turn into this obsessive quest for solutions. And in some cases, I know some people I've talked to with chronic illnesses that were undiagnosed or mysterious kinds of illnesses that they didn't really know what was going on, ended up having to feel a certain measure of acceptance about it and a certain sense of "I'm going to care for myself as best I can through rest and community and friendships, and being compassionate with myself and gentle with myself, and I might never get the sort of cure all that I'm hoping for, or I might never find exactly what's going on for me, and I'm still going to do my best to just care for myself and accept myself and accept my body in this process."
Charlotte Markey: Yeah, I really appreciate that your work has sort of taken this turn, and I like that a lot about your book, The Wellness Trap, because I feel like it's something that resonates with a lot of people, this quest to figure something out. And there's so many failings of our current approach to medicine. I think that it's not surprising then that you try a variety of other, maybe the sort of alternative things, whether it be cutting out certain types of foods, which we don't really want people to be doing, but I've had physicians actually tell me to do. And then, like you said, you start looking around online because you don't want to give up. You want to get to a place of feeling better.
I think that these are just very unfortunate but very normal responses to dealing with bodies that are not always going to function perfectly in medicine. That's really imperfect, not just in terms of how we practice it in the healthcare system, but also in terms of we don't always have a cure for everything. We don't always have a treatment for every condition. Or if you have overlapping conditions, you know, that can cause all kinds of issues, too. So, I mean, I have so much compassion for people who are struggling and trying to do their best. And I appreciate if they feel at odds with their body. I think that's a very normal response.
Actually, some of this, my interest in these topics led us to do a study a few years ago in my lab, and we wanted to see people who had chronic illness or chronic pain, if they could feel good about their bodies and what would predict that. And we found that actually having some sense of control over their health circumstances was helpful in terms of having a positive body image. So it wasn't lack of symptoms per se, or intensity of symptoms. It was more like, "Do I have this under control?" And it's a cross sectional study, it's correlational data. It was a relatively large sample of a few hundred people. But conclusive evidence on this topic is just one of very few studies really looking at body image among people with chronic illnesses or chronic pain. But it does suggest, I think, the importance for a lot of people doing something, trying to be proactive in some way.
Christy Harrison: Yeah. And I think that's where people can fall into wellness traps so easily, because what is on offer of things to do, right, the menu of things that one could do includes a lot of things that are really problematic.
Charlotte Markey: Yes, I'm sure you've probably seen some of the memes online that I've seen, where it's like, if one more person suggests acupuncture, right? Or if one more person suggests a chiropractor, or one more person tells me about their herbal supplement. It can be very frustrating when you're not getting the relief you need. So I appreciate that.
Christy Harrison: Well, speaking about online stuff, I'm really curious to talk about your research on how to mitigate the potential body image harms of social media. What those harms are, where they might be overblown, and what we can do to kind of protect ourselves online.
Charlotte Markey: Most of my research that has actually looked at social media has been with pre-adolescents or very young adults, but there is a growing body of research overall. So I don't want to just talk about the work that I've done, per se, because I think we need to look at sort of the collection of studies in order to see what's replicating. What do we feel confident saying? We know, not just because of one study, but because we have a growing body of literature in this area. And most of the studies are still correlational.
The research that can really help us draw more causal conclusions often asks young people to stay off their phones or they confiscate their phones, or they take a week long break and we see improvements in body image. They're not big, but they're there. So I think that's somewhat encouraging and that it does suggest a little bit more conclusively that some of this media use, and in particular, we know it's social media use, is problematic. But the effect sizes in this research are not particularly large. So I don't think we can say that social media is the only problem. And, of course, we had pervasive body dissatisfaction before social media, so it's not like Instagram created a problem. It may exacerbate some people's concerns, of course.
And something I've been really interested in is trying to think about it in terms of what are young people doing on social media, not just what platforms are they on or how much time are they spending? And those are kind of more concrete assessments, but I'm just not convinced from looking at the literature that those are necessarily the best assessments of social media use. So we've started trying to ask are you sending your friends messages? Are you posting pictures? Do you comment on people's pictures. Do you watch beauty tutorials? Are you following fitness influencers? Are you following celebrities?
The more appearance centric activities, as we call them, seem to definitely have a more detrimental association with body image. But if you have a kid who's mostly using social media to connect with people and say are we meeting for pizza tonight, then that's not nearly the same thing as a young girl who may already have a lot of insecurity, and that's probably what's bringing her to then look at a lot of beauty tutorials or what I eat in a day videos, and then those things are exacerbating the insecurity. Right? That's sort of a whole different constellation, I think, of experiences than liking your friend's cats. So we have to be careful that we're not just, I think, talking about these in two broadest strokes.
Christy Harrison: Right. That makes a lot of sense. I mean, what about the idea of algorithms? I have seen some evidence that social media algorithms amplify misinformation and also take people down these sort of rabbit holes and towards extremes of content. So kids can go in and sign up for an account and start looking at weight loss content or nutrition content, and at a sort of very innocent level. I mean, if one person who now leads a group called the Log Off Movement, Emma Lembke, she's talked about going on as eleven or twelve year old and searching for ab workouts or something like that. So clearly she was already thinking about that. She's already had that on her mind a little bit, but then it pushed her to such extremes that she was getting pro eating disorder content and stuff that really just triggered and fueled really intense eating disorder. So I'm curious what your thoughts on that are.
Charlotte Markey: I mean, I don't think we really have great research in the psychological literature about how social media use starts and then sort of longitudinally where it ends up. I think we know from the platforms themselves that these algorithms are very real, and we know from our personal experiences that they're very real. We'll probably get off this call and have eating disorder ads pop up or something because we're talking about it.
So I think it would be great to have more research within the platforms because they have access to more data and they can really tell us a lot more than we can as psychologists by asking people to remember what they did. There's always going to be a little bit lost, I think, in doing that kind of work. But I do think it's important also because like I said, we want to have a better understanding of how kids perceive their activities on social media. Like how do they see what they're doing as being a form of connecting with people or a form of learning things, or a form of learning things maybe we don't want them to learn, frankly.
So I think there's a lot of value and now there's a few studies, not a ton, that are starting to ask those sorts of questions more. And we understand that younger kids are more vulnerable than older kids, that girls seem to be a little bit more vulnerable than boys. I think even as adults, we're vulnerable. I feel like every adult I know, even people who use social media essentially for work, will say things like, "I use it, but it's a necessary evil. I kind of hate it." And yet it's, for many of us, become important to our work.
And I love when I'm able to connect with people who are like minded. And I've actually literally developed friendships with people in the field because we've connected via social media. And so I'm really grateful for that. And yet, I think we all have to be really careful about what we're liking, what we're spending time on, because we can, in theory, make the algorithm work for us. But I'm just not positive most young people are doing that, that they have the wherewithal to think, "This really compelling, captivating video about how to lose weight will send me in a direction I don't want to. So I'm going to scroll past that quickly." If it catches your attention, it's just very hard to look away sometimes.
Christy Harrison: Yeah. Even for grownups. I mean, I feel like I have a pretty tremendous capacity to focus sometimes when I want to and to sort of stay away from things that I think are going to be harmful or even just a waste of time, but sometimes I still find myself just unable to look away from something that I'm just like, why did I spend ten minutes of my life reading that or scrolling, watching this video or whatever it is that's not really useful to me in any way. And sometimes we need to just have fun and relax, and that's totally fine. But I think it is just difficult to resist the pulls of some of those things.
And algorithms are so good at zeroing in on what's going to make us stop and pay attention, especially things like TikTok, where that's really what it's built to do. I actually haven't spent much time on TikTok. I don't have an account, but I've watched videos here and there and done some research on it. But I don't think it has any sort of connection properties. It's just algorithmically delivered feeds.
Charlotte Markey: I mean, I think in theory, people feel connected to people they see all the time. So there are these sort of parasocial relationships that young people in particular are more apt to experience because they feel like they know someone, they feel some connection, and sometimes that may be fine. We all want to feel connection. That's a very important part of our humanity. But when we look at TikTok, we find that these sort of appearance focused interests that young people can find on TikTok, like fitness influencers or beauty type influencers, still have a negative correlation with body satisfaction. So the platform is different, but are the consequences of using it really all that different? I'm just not sure we know that yet. It doesn't seem to be so far.
Christy Harrison: Right. Well, one of the things you mentioned in your research was the difference between appearance focused and connection focused activities on social media. And, like, I think all the platforms have a lot of appearance focused activities to sort of take up your attention and whether or not they have connection focused opportunities, if you get into that appearance focused world, you're probably still gonna have those heightened risks, right?
Charlotte Markey: Yeah, I do think it's hard to avoid, but I also do think that if we're not going to have sort of age licensing of some sort, where kids really can't get onto these platforms until they're a certain age, whatever age that may be. I know technically it's 13 now, but since that's not enforced, it's essentially useless. So if we're not going to really, as a society, commit to this and find a way to actually monitor it. This is outside my expertise in terms of the technology. So I'm not sure how that would be done, but my understanding is that it's possible.
Well, if we're not going to do that, then I think what we need to do, at least for now, is really work on helping young people to be not just media literate, but to try to create algorithms, like I said, that could work for them, to encourage them to not follow people they don't know when they're young, for example, or to spend some time scrolling with them and offer them a chance to talk with us about what they're interested in and why because maybe they're not connecting with other people on TikTok, but maybe they can connect with us, adults in their lives about what they're interested in and why that's coming up.
It's pretty amazing, as kids become teenagers, how disinclined they are to talk to their adults in their lives, but they are interested in social media. So it actually, I think, can be a tool, just like we used to in the adolescent psychology world say, like, "No, watch TV with your kids. Use it as a way to talk with them about risk behaviors" or whatever. Now, I think the odds of sitting and watching TV shows may be lower than the odds of sitting and watching TikTok videos. So you take what you can get.
Christy Harrison: Yeah. Use it as an opportunity to connect and maybe talk through some of these issues.
Charlotte Markey: Right and ask questions. See if you can understand. Why are there concerns? Why are there insecurities? Did someone say something? Is there anything I can do as an adult in your life to be supportive? Is this making you feel bad when you see this? Should we then talk about why it's important to not follow things like that? I think as adults, we have those conversations with ourselves sometimes. Like, "Wait, this isn't helping me. I have to stop this." And we have more life experience and more self discipline than someone who doesn't have a fully developed prefrontal cortex. So we can, sometimes anyways, make those choices. But young people probably need some of our help to make them.
Christy Harrison: And that modeling of how to do that and how to make a different decision.
Charlotte Markey: Yeah. And not judging young people for their interests, because it's very, of course, natural to feel interested in things like your appearance. Especially during adolescence, when your appearance changes so much as a result of puberty.
Christy Harrison: So you talk about connection focused versus appearance focused activities on social media. One area, though, that I think that line gets blurred is with filtering tools like Facetune and things like that, which are rampant. And so many adolescents and adults are using them to the point where adults are going into plastic surgeons, asking them to make them look like their Snapchat filter or whatever. What does that do to people's body image? And how can people of all ages be wary of that, resilient to that, when maybe they are just going in to connect with friends and keep up with what people are doing, who they actually know in real life, but then they see these highly curated, filtered versions of them online.
Charlotte Markey: I think it's interesting that a lot of the young people I've interviewed when working on my body image books across the last, I don't know, five or six years now, will say things like,
