What ‘Thinspo’ Can Do to Your Mental and Physical Health

This content can be incredibly damaging to a person’s mental and physical health, glamorizing dangerous behaviors that can lead to serious problems that can include anxiety, depression, low self-worth, negative body image, and full-blown eating disorders. 

What is ‘Thinspo’?

Thinspo also directly promotes or encourages unhealthy behaviors to achieve these body goals. It may endorse practices that can lead to disordered eating behaviors or offer tips for losing weight. Perhaps most problematic, thinspo paints these choices positively, similar to pro-ana or “pro-eating disorder” content. It holds the quest for a perfect body up as the most important thing in life. 

A significant amount of this content is produced by individuals who struggle with eating disorders themselves. Many don’t realize the damage they’re doing to their own bodies or the potential harm they may cause others by encouraging them to adopt unhealthy habits, although disguised as healthy eating and behaviors.

Why is Thinspo Harmful?

Some would argue that not all content characterized as thinspo encourages self-destructive habits, but the reality is that thinspo impacts body image. These posts can be very harmful, regardless of what they specifically show, and should be flagged as having the potential to trigger dangerous behaviors and mental and physical complications. 

For example, some content creators may not mention disordered eating specifically or actively encourage people to engage in that behavior.² But the nature of their content may highlight their underweight bodies, which can glamorize this look and hold it up as a standard others should strive for.

These posts can also be tricky because, while they can be problematic for a person’s mental health, they may not technically violate a social media platform’s policy, making them challenging to flag or take down.

What Can Thinspo Do to Someone’s Mental Health?

Thinspo content can work to both encourage a negative body image and damage a positive body image. And some internet users are more susceptible to these messages than others.

Many teenagers fall down a rabbit hole of thinspo internet content, which can significantly distort how they view their bodies and what they see as the ideal body type. Viewing thinspo content can lead to an increase in distorted weight perception and lower self-esteem, which, in turn, can result in depression and anxiety and lead to eating disorders.

Research has suggested that while this content alone doesn’t generally cause eating disorders, it may encourage them since low self-esteem and distorted weight perception can contribute to eating disorders. It can also make it more difficult for a person to see they have a severe mental health problem, delaying treatment.³

What often happens to people with eating disorders is they slowly create an online “echo chamber” for themselves, entering digital spaces where other people struggling with eating disorders encourage disordered behavior. This can work to normalize unhealthy habits. In addition, people with eating disorders often get into a competitive mindset, comparing their body weight and shape to each other and trying to “beat” others regarding weight loss goals and calorie intake.

Can Thinspo Content Impact Your Physical Health?

Once someone begins regularly participating in disordered eating behaviors, it can cause a number of related issues to their physical health. These can include severe malnourishment and electrolyte imbalances, heart problems, kidney problems, nerve damage, cognitive impairment, bone loss, hair loss, blocked intestines, constipation, diarrhea, dizziness or fainting, and more.⁴

Just Say No to Thinspo

In this digital age, monitoring the content you’re consuming is crucial. Often, if someone tends to look at certain types of content, various algorithms will pick up on this trend and start showing them more of the same.

You may not even realize the content you’re viewing is promoting behaviors that have the potential to harm you or work against building a healthy body image. But if you feel bad about yourself and want to change your appearance when looking at social media and other digital content, it should be a sign to start paying attention.

Many people, especially women, are surrounded by unrealistic images of bodies, such as in social media and movies, that can damage their self-image and result in an unhealthy body image. Content that works to combat people’s misconceptions about what a normal, healthy body looks like can help reduce a person’s risk of developing an eating disorder.

Remember: bodies come in all shapes and sizes, and your weight does not determine your worth.