“”We no longer treat a TCA without approaching social networks. They have become a trigger factor, a certain accelerator and an obstacle to healing“Summarizes Carole Copti, dietician-nutritionist in Paris.
In France, nearly a million people suffer from mental anorexia, nervous bulimia, or bulimic hyperphagia, particularly women aged 17 to 25.
If the causes of TCAs are multifactorial (biological, psychological, social), the actors in the sector are increasingly pointing out the “devastating” impact of social networks in these pathologies.
“”This is not the cause but it is the drop of water that can overflow the vase“, Explains Nathalie Godart, child and adolescent psychiatrist at the Health Foundation of Students in France.
Through the promotion of thinness, an ultra-controlled diet, and fierce physical activity, social networks weaken already vulnerable and “amplify threats to the health of young people“, She adds.
Like the #Skinnytok trend, which is full of violent, guilty and dangerous injunctions, encouraging its diet drastically.
Laxatives and vomiting
For Charlyne Buigues, nurse specializing in TCA, social networks are “a gateway” to these disorders, which are “trivialized”.
She denounces the highlighting of videos of young girls suffering from mental anorexia who exhibit their unnamed body, or others suffering from nervous bulimia and which display their “purges”. “”Taking laxatives or vomiting are presented as a completely legitimate means of losing weight, while the risk is to make a cardiac arrest“Recalls Ms. Buigues.
Beyond generating serious problems, especially cardiacs and fertility, TCA constitutes the second cause of premature mortality in France in France in 15-24 year olds, according to health insurance.
For Ms. Copti, social networks even form a “gear”. “People with TCA often have a low self-esteem. But by exposing their thinness caused by anorexia on social networks, they will combine subscribers, views, +likes +… and that will maintain their disorders and prolong the denial phase.”
Especially since some content will be monetized. Charlyne Buigues also tells that a young woman who films herself regularly in + live + on Tiktok vomiting “explained that she was remunerated by the platform, which allowed her to finance her shopping”.
“I don’t make the weight”
And even when people engage in a healing process, social networks make care “harder, more complex and longer“, warns Carole Copti.
In question: false nutrition information that swarms on platforms and that young people hold for real.
“”The consultation is a bit like my trial. I must constantly justify myself and fight to make them understand that no, it is not possible to hold by eating only 1,000 calories per day – half of their needs – or that no, it is not normal to jump meals“Develops the dietician-nutritionist.
“”The patients are completely indoctrinated and I do not make the weight, I, with my consultation of 45 minutes per week, facing hours spent daily on Tiktok“, she breathes.
In the same sense, Nathalie Godart alerts on the proliferation of “pseudo-coaches” which share “aberrant” advice, which could be akin to “the illegal exercise of nutrition”.
“”The word of these influencers weighs much more than that of institutional. We constantly train to spend simple messages on the diet“, she deplores, recalling that an anorexia Bulimie Info listening line can be reached at 09.69.325.900.
Very active on social networks through his Instagram account @aucoeurdestca, Charlyne Buigues spends her time reporting problematic content even if it “is useless”.
“”The contents remain online and the accounts are only rarely suspended, it is really tiring“She sighs.
The nurse thus manages to advise her patients to remove certain networks, including Tiktok. “”It may seem radical but as long as young people are not better informed, the application is too dangerous. “