Heredity puts some adolescent girls at risk for some eating
disorders. A history of eating problems as a child can also put
them at risk. Also teens who experience negative-self esteem or
mood or anxiety disorders are more at risk as are the girls who
have been sexually harassed by their peers. Also, media can play a
part in leading to eating disorders.
During puberty, there is an increased risk for developing an
eating disorder.Up to 50 percent of this risk can be attributed to
genetic factors that emerge during puberty. It was found that
before puberty, environmental factors alone contribute to the
development of various eating disorders. As puberty progresses, the
genetic risk is activated and increases in importance to accounting
for more than half the risk for eating pathology.
Family studies of those with anorexia and bulimia have found a
higher lifetime prevalence of eating disorders among relatives of
eating disorders.
Some genes identified in the contribution to eating disorders
have been shown to be associated with specific personality traits.
They are believed to be highly heritable and often exist prior to
the onset of the eating disorder. These traits are:
Obsessive thinking
Perfectionistic tendencies
Sensitivity to reward and punishment
Emotional instability
Hypersensitivity
Impulsivity
Rigidity
One influence in society, the admiration of extreme thinness,
receives the most blame for causing or triggering eating disorders.
A simple dietary trend toward restricting the types or volume or
energy density of food - with or without increased activity through
exercise or athletics - is cited as the common factor in all types
of eating disorders.
Dieting, a normalized behavior in modern society, has been
called a "gateway drug" to eating disorders. Despite conclusive
evidence that restrictive diets are only very rarely successful at
permanent weight loss in those seeking to reduce body fat, there is
abundant encouragement in society to diet and to condemn those
whose weights are average or above.
With the photoshop of magazine and billboard photos, people are
susceptible to believing their body is abnormal, or defective,
pushing them towards eating disorder behaviors.The exposure created
eating disorders within the culture and preoccupations with shape,
weight, negative body image and purging. This illustrated the
catastrophic effect social media and media has on humans.