Causes of a negative body image

Body image is how you think or feel about your appearance, your body and how you feel in your own skin. Maintaining a normal and healthy body image during adolescence, a period of major physical and emotional changes, can be difficult. Factors that might harm a teenager's body image include:

• Natural or expected weight gain and other changes caused by puberty
• Peer pressure to look a certain way
• Social media and other media images that promote the ideal body as fit, thin or muscular and encourage users to aspire to unrealistic or unattainable body ideals
• Having a parent who's overly concerned about his or her own weight or his or her child's weight or appearance
• Seeing material in which a teen is seen as a thing for others' sexual use, rather than an independent, thinking person (sexual objectification)