A report by Guardian recently revealed in a study of Algorithms on social media shows that three out of four children as young as 12 “dislike their bodies and are embarrassed by the way they look.”

stem4, a youth mental health charity surveyed 1,024 children and young people aged between 12-21 years old for the study. Eight out of ten young people between the ages of 18 and 21 dislike and are embarrassed by their bodies, the algorithms show.

Algorithms are rarely wrong

Dr. Nihara Krause, consultant clinical psychologist, CEO and founder of stem4 said, “The findings of this survey are deeply worrying.”

“We need to improve understanding of the potentially compelling impact of social media content, and the reinforcement created through algorithms, on young people’s engagement with apps and their consequent mental health,” Krause continued. 

Based on the findings of the report, nearly half of all children and young people between the ages of 12 to 21 who were surveyed said they have “become withdrawn, started exercising excessively, stopped sociali[z]ing completely or self-harmed because they are regularly bullied or trolled online about their physical appearance.”

About 40 per cent of those surveyed said that they are going through mental health distress while one in five reported having body image issues. The survey found that fourteen per cent said they have engaged in disordered eating patterns such as extreme restrictive eating, binge eating, and purging or vomiting.

Only one out of ten were receiving treatment out of the participants who are “in need of support.”

Social media trigger for young people

Krause told Guardian that young people often resort to social media when searching for “much-needed information and advice,” a behaviour which exposed them to a “supposed reality that is distorted and harmful.”