Eating Disorders Among Teenagers

Shannon Potts

DE English

Solution Paper

January, 21 2014

Teenage Eating Disorders

Eating disorders cause an extreme amount of damage to a person’s health, self-esteem and, physical appearance. Eating disorders are thoughts, emotions, and behaviors surrounding weight, food, body image, and body shape. An eating disorder starts out as eating less and skipping meals during the day. It will eventually lead to not eating any meals for several days in a row or binge eating and then removing the food from the body by purging. Eating disorders are developed or influenced by multiple reasons. They are now being developed at a younger age than they used to. Eating disorders are occurring in the majority of teenagers all throughout the world. Teenagers are resorting in eating disorders to change the size and shape of their body. They do this to become what they think is considered a normal body shape and size. Eating disorders have become an epidemic that has spread almost everywhere in the world. Teenage eating disorders are becoming a dangerous problem in the world and more common each and every day.

Teenagers are developing eating disorders at a very large rate. There are many factors that contribute to teenagers developing eating disorders. The first reason that so many teenagers are developing eating disorders is because they are influenced by society. Eating disorders among teenagers are at an increased rate because of the huge value society places on being thin. Teenagers everywhere are under the influence that to be pretty, beautiful, happy, and successful you have to thin or a certain size. They think that they have to be a mirror image of what society thinks makes a person perfect. Society is not the only reason that teenager...

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...ing disorders may seem impossible to stop, there are solutions to help gain control of the problem. Society and the media needs to express to teenagers that body image isn’t everything, they do not have to look the same as everyone else, and that it is okay to be a normal weight or even bigger sized. Even though society, the media, and the fashion industry influences and even causes eating disorders, teenagers need to realize that it is what is inside that counts and that the size of your body will not change the type of person they are. Teenagers also need to be happy with the way their body looks no matter what size it is and not change it because they do not look like someone else. Another thing that teenagers need to do is to not become pressured into being thin. They need to stop caring about how society sees them and embrace the size and shape of their body.