LRA on the Effects of Online Social Interactions on Eating Disorders Among Adolescents
Sadman Rahin
3/11/2024
City College of New York
Eng 21700
With the rise of social media and online video games, many of the social interactions take place in the virtual world. Especially during the recent pandemic lockdown, people became more connected to their online identity and presence. However, similar to the real world, online social engagements can have similar or greater negative effects on a person’s mental health, especially in the developing minds of teenagers. Regardless of the numerous studies published on this topic, further research is required for an in-depth understanding of the factors that impact adolescents eating behaviors. Thus, this lab report analysis essay intends not only to analyze three different experiments and studies on a similar topic but also to show their effectiveness and how these studies can be improved or replicated in the future. While all reports effectively address the research topic, Report 3 provided a strong abstract, introduction, methods, results, and conclusion sections with appropriate rhetoric and organization compared to Reports 1 and 2, making Report 3 highly comprehensible and replicable.
In experimental Report 1, “Effect of Exposure to Thinness Ideals in Social Networks on Self-Esteem and Anxiety”, Suarez et al. studied the effect of exposure to social networks and stereotypical images of the thinness ideal on ED symptomatology on a sample of 321 young adults assigned to two experimental conditions: high and low exposure to the thin ideal and found that exposure to thin ideals influences self-esteem but does not affect major factors for eating disorders like body dissatisfaction and drive for thinness. In experimental Report 2, “Virtual Rejection and Overinclusion in Eating Disorders: An Experimental Investigation of the Impact on Emotions, Stress Perception, and Food Attitudes”, Meneguozo et al. studied the effects of virtual social inclusion or ostracism on emotions, perceived stress, eating psychopathology, and the drive to binge or restrict eating in 122 adolescents and adult females diagnosed with eating disorders compared to 50 healthy peers by evaluating their performance and responses to a virtual ball-tossing game and found that anorexia nervosa patients showed heightened negative effects after exclusion and bulimia nervosa patients exhibited increased negative impacts after overinclusion in the game. Lastly, this essay analyzes a survey-relative quantitative lab report, “The Role of Weight- and Appearance-Related Discrimination on Eating Disorder Symptoms Among Adolescents and Emerging Adults” by Cohrdes et al. that studied the associations between weight- and appearance-related discrimination and eating disorders among 8504 adolescents using a German representative health monitoring survey and found weight and appearance-related discrimination, body image dissatisfaction, low self-efficacy, and high media use were highly associated with eating disorder symptoms among adolescents. All of these studies focus on adolescents’ online presence and its effect on eating disorder-related symptomatology.
The titles of the reports include the major focuses of the studies and use full words instead of abbreviations for a better understanding of the reader. Lab report 1 by Suarez et.al does not mention eating disorder symptomatology in their title. Although in their abstract they clearly mention that they “measure the exposure of social networks and stereotypical images of the thinness ideal on ED (eating disorder) symptomatology and analyze the mediator role of anxiety in this process”, their title mainly focuses on self-esteem and anxiety. This may confuse the readers who are trying to find reports on eating disorders. Furthermore, among the three lab reports, Reports 2 & 3 present abstract information by dividing it into separate subsections and providing a brief summary of each section. However, Report 1 presents the abstract in a single paragraph that includes a one-sentence summary of all the sections. Report 2 & 3’s outline helps the readers find specific information and summary of the specific sections of the report easily. Meneguzzo et al.’s abstract does not include implications or further calls to action based on their results but the other reports address both of these points.
Compared to Reports 1 and 2, Report 3’s introduction is again divided into sections that present previous research findings on all the factors involved in the research. Their outlined presentation of information is really helpful for readers who are looking to get specific information from the report about the specific factors they are addressing in the report. They all provide hypotheses based on the previous research findings. Report 1’s hypothesis doesn’t address a direct measurement of eating disorders. Instead, they measure a quality called “drive for thinness”, that is closely related to eating disorders. This hinders the readers who are trying to find information on all of the aspects of eating disorders that the title and abstract propose to research but the factor “drive for thinness” does not cover them.
Report 2 by Meneguzzo, only mentions the various types of questionnaires and a picture of questionnaires inquired before and after the cyberball game. The readers need to do further research on the questionnaires as the report did not include the exact questions used. It is also hard to interpret just from the pictures provided. In comparison, the table presentations of sample size and variables in Reports 1 and 3 are a better representation and provide in-depth information about the method. Only Report 3 contains the exact questionnaires asked to measure each factor, the other two reports either mention the type of questionnaires or the names of them. This makes it harder for the readers to replicate and understand the methods section for Reports 1 & 2.
Report 3 shows a clearer explanation of the results section compared to Reports 1 & 2 due to their excessive use of visual graphs and tables to show the correlations found in their report. Reports 2 and 3 have some analysis and interpretation alongside data, so their results section is extensive and does not meet the criteria for avoiding these processes, whereas Report 1’s results include only the necessary quantitative analysis. This makes Report 1’s results easier to analyze for the readers.
In the discussion section, Report 1 focuses more on previous research than their findings, which helps us find the differences but takes the focus off of their research topic. In comparison instead of only mentioning previous research, Report 2 draws conclusions and interpretations of their report in line with previous research done on the topic and mentions the findings that do not align with their results. Report 2 stresses the need for further research because it was the first to use the Cyberball method. This is a great inclusion and makes it especially important to build on their findings. Lastly, Report 3 includes various graphs and charts and explains their findings compared to the previous studies. The graphs and charts are not proper elements of a discussion section but in their report, it helps in understanding the results of the study. Report 3 also includes a separate section for the strengths and weaknesses of their study which makes it easier to find and distinguish than other reports. Report 2’s discussion includes thoughts and further description of their study which helps the reader to replicate and understand the study in-depth, whereas Reports 1 & 3 focus more on their findings compared to previous research. This makes it harder for the readers to understand the findings from Reports 1 & 3.
Report 1 includes their conclusion in the discussion section which makes it hard to find. Report 2’s conclusion does not mention any social implications while Reports 1 & 3 do. Report 1 does not have an acknowledgments section. Report 2 mentions the authors and the institutions that funded and permitted data use for their research but does not thank them. Report 3 meets all the requirements for the acknowledgments section where they thank and mention all the participants, facilities, and institutions that assisted them in conducting their research.
Reports 2 and 3 use numbers whereas Report 1 uses alphabetical order to list their citations. All of the reports do not have an appendix section. Reports 1 & 2 should have included the questions from specific questionnaires asked in their experiment in the appendix as they did not exactly mention them in their report. This hinders the readers’ ability to effectively understand and replicate the study.
In summary, all of the reports effectively present information about the topic of social media and its effect on eating disorders. However, in certain parts, they lack attributes of successful lab reports. Overall, Report 3 uses strategies like outlining and visual graphs and charts to present information that greatly elevates the report compared to the other two. Readers can easily replicate Report 3’s study by reading it. Report 3 presents all of the necessary checklists and follows all the guidelines of a good lab report. In contrast, Reports 1 and 2 miss a few key checklists, and their presentation of information is not pleasing to read.
References:
- Rodriguez-Suarez, B., Caperos, J. M., & Martinez-Huertas, J. A. (2022). EFFECT OF EXPOSURE TO THINNESS IDEALS IN SOCIAL NETWORKS ON SELF-ESTEEM AND ANXIETY. Behavioral Psychology/Psicologia Conductual, 30(3), 677+. https://link-gale-com.ccny-proxy1.libr.ccny.cuny.edu/apps/doc/A732111343/AONE?u=cuny_ccny&sid=bookmark-AONE&xid=7c6471d8
- Cohrdes, C., Santos-Hövener, C., Kajikhina, K., & Hölling, H. (2021). The role of weight- and appearance-related discrimination on eating disorder symptoms among adolescents and emerging adults. BMC Public Health, 21(1). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-021-11756-y
- Meneguzzo, P., Meregalli, V., Collantoni, E., Cardi, V., Tenconi, E., & Favaro, A. (2023). Virtual rejection and Overinclusion in Eating Disorders: an experimental investigation of the impact on emotions, stress perception, and food attitudes. Nutrients, 15(4), 1021. https://doi.org/10.3390/nu15041021
