Psychology

Abstract
This essay tackles and provides evidence for the hypothesis that the media is not the biggest factor in teenagers becoming anorexic. Specifically, this essay will present some studies as well as information from reputable sources on the possible nature of eating disorders in general and anorexia nervosa in particular. Moreover, this essay seeks to explain the other possible causes of anorexia nervosa with the media excluded.

The National Eating Disorders Association states that there are as many as 10 million women and 1 million men who suffer from eating disorders in the United States alone (Landau, 2010). Eating disorders include bulimia nervosa, binge eating, and anorexia nervosa. Anorexia nervosa is an eating disorder where individuals believe theyre fat even when theyre dangerously thin and restrict their eating to the point of starvation (Eating disorders, 2010). Anorexia nervosa may have a variety of complications that range from the simplest to the most severe such as heart failure, brain damage, swollen joints, and brittle bones that break easily as a result of calcium loss (Eating disorders, 2002). The rate of incidence of anorexia nervosa and its complications justify why there is a need to determine its actual causes. Various studies on the causes of anorexia nervosa have been conducted by doctors, scientists, and geneticists, and have been published in several academic journals both online and offline. However, these studies do not clearly or exactly say that the media is the only or most significant cause of anorexia nervosa. All claims therefore pointing to the media as the main reason behind teenagers being anorexic are false.

The Insignificant Role of the Media
The media is certainly not the reason why teenage girls become anorexic. If ever media has something to do with eating disorders such as anorexia, all it does is to lower ones self-esteem or worsen it. In a study that investigated the direct relationship between media exposure and eating disorders where the female subjects were shown idealized female bodies in womens fashion magazines, the results showed that women were significantly not affected by the nature of the photographs they saw but the women predisposed to or already suffering from eating disorders overestimated morethe pictures of women than when they saw photographs of neutral objects (Hamilton  Waller, 1993). The results of this study clearly show that media does not directly cause eating disorders in individuals unless they already tend to do it or they may already be suffering from it.

The results of the study discussed above are closely similar to those of another study that examined the link among magazine preference, sociocultural appearance standards, and the incidence of eating disorders among college women and whose results showed that young women are negatively affected by media images representing thin body types. (Lokken, Worthy,  Trautmann, 2004)

Still in another study that linked eating behavior with television exposure, it was found out that key indicators of disordered eating were significantly more prevalent following exposure and that the the subjects interest in weight loss increased as a means of modeling themselves after television characters. However, the study used Fijian adolescent girls who, according to the researchers, belonged to media-nave populations (Becker, Burwell, Herzog, Hamburg,  Gilman, 2002) and whose curiosity about the television may have caused them to be overwhelmed by the images in it, thus explains they immediately followed it. The results of this study, however, are different from a study conducted on Spanish girls aged 12-21 whose results stated that no independent association with eating disorders was found for television viewing. (Martinez-Gonzalez et al., 2003)

Based on the results of the studies mentioned above, the role of the media in the development of eating disorders such as anorexia is definitely insignificant and if ever it is, then it is very little or it simply lowers ones self-esteem. Overall the media does not do any good to the issue of eating disorders but its direct and significant effects on their incidence are still not clear.

The Real Causes
According to one study about the subjective accounts of anorexic patients on the causes of their anorexia, the most commonly perceived cases were dysfunctional families, weight loss and dieting, and stressful experiences and perceived pressure (Tozzi, Sullivan, Fear, McKenzie,  Bulik, 2003). This indirectly states that the media is not one of the leading causes of anorexia.

Other causes of eating disorders may include low self-esteem, feelings of helplessness, and intense dissatisfaction with the way they look and the tendency to be perfectionistic. However, such causes may be brought about by several circumstances such as family members or friends who may repeatedly tease them about their bodies or participation in sports that emphasize low weight or a certain body image such as gymnastics. (Brownell, Hotelling, Lowe,  Rayfield, 2010)

The findings above simply tell us that the media is not one of the real causes of eating disorders like anorexia. Low self-esteem, which is a major cause of eating disorders, is not necessarily triggered by the media and may arise from causes other than it.

Family Problems. One family study concluded that there is a significant correlation between the incidence of eating disorders and mood disorders in families (Hudson, Laird, Betensky, Keck,  Pope, 2001), thereby suggesting that anorexia nervosa may take root from moods brought about by interaction among family members.  In another study that determined the link between parental factors and eating disorders, the results were similar in that there seems to be a higher incidence of eating disorders among young people who are usually eating alone or those whose parents have a marital status different from being married.  (Martinez-Gonzalez et al., 2003)

A Genetic Link. In a particular study published by the American Journal of Human Genetics in March 2002, researchers have discovered that anorexia nervosa has a genetic linkage on chromosome 1 for the complex psychiatric disorder and stated that sociocultural factors are only important in that they might elicit an expression of someones pre-existing genetic predisposition (DeAngelis, 2010). These findings are clearly more important than all the external influences mentioned before on the development of anorexia nervosa.

Conclusion
The media is clearly not the major cause of anorexia nervosa. All it may do is lower ones self-esteem, which is the major contributing factor to the incidence of anorexia and other eating disorders. However, the results of various researches do not emphasize this influence but instead other causes such as dysfunctional families, weight loss and dieting, and stressful experiences and perceived pressure (Tozzi et al., 2003) circumstances within the family (Becker et al., 2002 Martinez-Gonzalez et al., 2003) and even the genes (DeAngelis, 2010).  Nevertheless, further research is needed in order to confirm whether these findings remain true in the case of teenage women and which factors may cause possible variations with the results.