Beyond restricting social media use: how schools can tackle the growing body image crisis

With today being World Social Media Day (June 30), Butterfly Foundation, the national charity for eating disorders and body image concerns, says its recent major national survey found that more than half of young people aged 12-18 report that social media makes them feel dissatisfied with their bodies, while 9 in 10 agree that secondary schools should do more to support positive body image.

While age restrictions are set to be in place by end the of 2025 through the Online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum Age) Bill, research from the eSafety Commissioner found that 80 per cent of 8- to 12-year-old children had used social media in 2024, despite major platforms already having clear age restrictions already in place for people under 13. 

Butterfly’s Director of Education Initiatives Danni Rowlands says this demonstrates that a critical part of the solution is to equip young people with knowledge and skills that extends beyond restricting social media use.

“Body image and the influence of social media is a complex issue, and we need to take a multifaceted, strength-based approach to better protect our young people,” Rowlands says.

Harmful messaging, misinformation and inappropriate content and imagery will continue to exist and evolve both online and offline, posing ongoing risks, she explains.

“This World Social Media Day we are reminding educators, schools and parents that they play an important role in helping young people build their social media literacy skills so they can navigate online environments in a safe and positive way.”

Butterfly says its new eLearning program, BodyKind Online Education (BKOE), fills an important gap as it is the first evidence-informed, strength-based, digital eLearning program developed specifically for Australian secondary schools that supports body image and online safety for young people, aged 12-16.  

World Social Media Day serves as an opportunity to reflect on the ways social media can be used positively while acknowledging the challenges that come with it. 

Split into two age-specific programs – one for students in Years 7 and 8, and one for students in Year 9 and 10 – BKOE, Butterfly says, helps young people navigate appearance-based content and teasing, AI, misinformation, algorithms, online safety features, and beauty, body and health ideals.

With body dissatisfaction being a key risk factor for the development of eating disorders, and social media creating unique pressures, lived experience advocate Varsha Yajman believes change is urgently needed.

She says BKOE strengthens critical thinking, self-compassion and help-seeking, which is vital considering more than 73 per cent of young people ‘never’ or ‘rarely’ talk to someone when they’re feeling bad about their body or appearance.

“Social media exacerbated my eating disorder and continued to exacerbate it. I have to manually block out all the diet culture content, and it’s frightening how normalised it is,” Yajman says.

“Young people urgently need more support to tackle these issues, with or without age restrictions in place, because harmful content does not stop once you turn 16”.

In contrast, Mission Australia’s most recent survey canvassed the views of 17,480 young people across Australia aged between 15 and 19, and found teenagers who spend between one and three hours on social media a day report similar or better mental health outcomes compared with teenagers using social media less.

Youth mental health body Orygen says this suggests moderation may be key and that social media is “not, in itself, a problem for all young people”.

Lead survey author and Orygen research fellow Dr Louise La Sala says while there has been a dominant narrative that all social media use is bad for young people, what their survey found was that moderate users were faring better or the same as low users.

“We saw that in terms of their sense of control over their lives, the hope they had for their futures, the way they were more likely to reach out to family or friends or take part in exercise in sports,” La Sala told Guardian Australia last week.

“It challenges the assumption that many of us hold that social media is inherently bad.”

La Sala said the ban on under-16s from social media, which includes TikTok, Snapchat and Instagram, and is due to come into effect in December, should not be the end point of making social media safer for all users.

“It doesn’t really matter if you’re 16 or 26, you shouldn’t be exposed to harmful content.

“The ban is one attempt at trying to mitigate some of these harms for young people but there is so much more we need to be doing, and the conversation doesn’t stop there,” La Sala said.

Pilot evaluations of BKOE were conducted by Sunshine Coast University in 2024, and revealed statistically significant improvements in students' social media literacy.

Students who completed the program reported improvements in being able to critically assess appearance-focused media messages, as well as improvements in social media behaviours, aspects of help-seeking and self-compassion.  

BodyKind Online Education is available for all Australian secondary schools from Term 3. To find out more and register, click here.