The Relationship between Social Media Addiction and Eating Disorders among Followers of Social Media Influencers.

BACKGROUND

We aimed to evaluate the relationship between social media addiction and eating disorders in the followers of social media influencer.

METHOD

The study (n=561) was conducted with 112 men and 449 women, who follow a social media influencer and volunteered to participate in the study. Social media addiction scale for adults form (SMAS-AF) was used to evaluate the social media addiction, and ORTO-15 scale was used to determine the eating disorders.

RESULTS

80.9% of the participants had orthorexia nervosa and 19.1% were normal. BMI and social media addiction scale total score were significantly higher than optimal rates and ORTO-15 total score was significantly low (<0.05). Age, anthropometric measurements, sub-scores of SMAS-AF and clinical domain sub-score of orthorexia nervosa were significantly different between the groups (<0.05). It was significantly found that the emotional domain sub-score increased as the virtual tolerance score and virtual communication score increased (<0.05). A relationship was found between the total score of the social media addiction scale and the emotional domain sub-score (<0.05).

CONCLUSION

Social media use may negatively affect individuals' eating behaviors and contribute to body image dissatisfaction.