A New Study Shows Teen Girls Are More Affected by Digital Body-Shaming Than We Thought
Body-shaming is nothing new — I’m pretty sure Eve received some in the Garden of Eden — but what is new is the way girls are increasingly able to body shame others online. While we had to deal with almond moms and mean girls at school, Gen Z girls could get body shamed from hundreds, if not millions, of online critics. I experienced this at a fraction when a video I made went viral, and people left the cruelest, most unhinged comments, many of which were about my body and others’ bodies. Online body-shaming is dehumanizing, traumatic, and humiliating — and teen girls especially are taking it hard. A new study found that it affects young girls even more than we originally thought, and it’s not hard to believe.
Taliah Prince and Daniel Hermens, who work at the Youth Mental Health & Neurobiology at the University of the Sunshine Coast, have researched online comments, body-shaming, and cyber-bullying along with a team of other researchers. In one study, they found that cyber-bullying revolving around appearance is one of the most common and harmful forms of online abuse in the young. Another study, published this month, found that being exposed to online body shaming — even the ones directed at others — can cause your brain to react like its receiving emotional pain and social threat.’
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The study, published in NeuroImage, looked at brain images of teenage girls who experienced appearance-related cyberbullying. This might look like people targeting the way someone else looks or negatively commenting on weight, size, face, clothes, or body in public ways. Researchers examined the girls’ brains through a functional MRI and found areas involved in emotional pain, self-image, and social judgement in the brain would light up when they viewed body shaming comments online. Even though the teens in the study were looking at hateful comments directed at other girls, rather than being directly bullied, they were still affected by the harmful messages.
“These messages don’t need to be long or explicit to hurt. Sometimes a single word, hashtag or even emoji is enough,” Prince and Hermens wrote about this study in a new article for The Conservationist.
“This tells us something important: body-shaming content doesn’t just hurt the person it targets,” the authors added. “When appearance is constantly judged and criticized, it can change what girls think is normal or acceptable. It may also affect how their brains respond to social and emotional situations.”
This tracks with other research on girls’ body image and social media. A 2024 study found that it takes just 8 minutes for young women to be negatively affected by eating disorder content on TikTok.
“Diet culture is a multi-billion dollar industry,” Sammi Farber, a psychotherapist, coach, and TikToker who specializes in helping clients recover from eating disorders, previously told SheKnows. “Children, young adults, and teens don’t realize that what they’re watching is quite literally brainwashing them in a matter of seconds.”
There have been tiny efforts to help, like the banning of #SkinnyTok, but there is still so much more to do. Like the rise of #FitTok, which can promote unhealthy exercise and eating habits that glorifies an unrealistic body type.
“Social media has been an absolutely wonderful thing for self-esteem and absolutely terrible thing for kids’ self-esteem simultaneously,” Dr. Ken Ginsburg, MD, MSEd, founder and director of the Center for Parent & Teen Communication, previously told SheKnows. He highlighted that social media can be positive, especially when it allows kids who feel like outliers to connect with others outside of their community, and negative when teens feel like they aren’t good enough.
Credit: Norma Mortenson/Pexels
Norma Mortenson/Pexels
If they are exposed to cyber bullying, chances are your child could develop some form of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). A May 2025 study found that even subtle forms of cyber bullying can cause PTSD in kids.
“As our research clearly shows, cyberbullying in any form – whether it’s exclusion from a group chat or direct threats – can lead to significant trauma in youth,” Sameer Hinduja, Ph.D., lead author, said in a statement.
The study also found that 87 percent of teens experienced at least one of the 18 common forms of cyberbullying studied, with indirect forms like being the target of mean or hurtful comments or rumors, or being deliberately excluded from group chats, being the most common. (Another study found that 98 percent of teen girls had experienced cyber-bullying, with 96 percent reporting that it made them want to change how they looked.)
And now we know that even not being the target of cyber bullying — just witnessing it — is just as bad.
“Adolescence is a developmental period deeply rooted in peer acceptance and social belonging,” Tessa Stuckey, MA, LPC, previously told SheKnows.
She added, “When teens are excluded or rejected online, their brains process it similarly to physical pain. It attacks their self-worth, identity, and perceived social value — often in a public or permanent way due to the nature of digital platforms.”
Teen girls are reading hateful online comments and body-shaming messages to heart, and it’s affecting their self-esteem and how they view their own bodies. It’s time for parents to step in, help their teens build body positivity, and to ignore the haters.
These celebrity parents are raising strong, resilient daughters.
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