Eating Disorders Among Teenage Girls Proposal

Introduction (clarification on the purpose of the study)

An eating disorder is a type of illness that causes severe disturbances to the everyday diet : an individual can consume to much food, or, on the contrary, eat very little; consequently, it causes distress or concern about boy weight.

Common eating disorders include Anorexia, Nervosa, Bulimia nervosa and Binge – eating disorders.

Anorexia disorder

It is characterized by the symptoms that follow:

• Extreme thinness.
• Intense fear of gaining weight
• Lack of menstruation among girls and women
• Extremely restricted eating

Bulimia Nervosa disorder

• It has the following characteristics:
• Frequent episode of unusual eating large amount of food.
• Swollen salivary glands (Myers, 2009)
• Severe dehydration.

Dinge – eating disorder

It occurs as a result of over eating and therefore has the following symptoms:-

• A person losses control over his weight.
• Regular periods of eating are not followed.

A research has shown that all mentioned disorders affect girls and women mostly. (Beins, 2004)

Population of Internet

Teenage girls and women who are still young adults are the best targets for the survey. A research has shown that women all over the world are affected by mass media mostly (Mcneill, and Chapman, 2009). Millions of people, especially our youngsters, forget their own make up. They begin to perceive themselves as substandard over time and they need to be reminded that each person is beautiful in his/her own way. Therefore they should avoid duplication of pictures in television shows.

Assess resources

Research has indicated that most teen girls mostly budget on their boy shapes and design. In the long-run, they end – up in heavy weight problems which is not healthy. Similarly, it is found that most of them have acquired personal facilities such as :-

Computers (Laptops and Ipads)

Digital phones and cameras

The above facilities have enabled them to access the Internet everywhere, even while on their journeys. Consequently, this has facilitated adoption of the life styles they want.

Images of women on body weight

Research has clearly indicated that most women are adversely affected by media adverts, television productions and major motion pictures alike. They will therefore begin to practice different lifestyles while abandoning that of their own. (Eysenck, 2004).

During questionnaire filling of the research, a researcher posted the following questions.

1. How many teens can feel free to express themselves/ and how many teens can become a critical viewer?
2. How many teens and young women perceive themselves as substandard? And how many teens will like to depend on mass media advertisements and television productions to adopt new eating habits.

The results between options (a) and (b) shocked the researcher in that option (a) was rejected by majority of teens while option (b) was selected to be most appropriate by majority of the teens. This indicated that the vision of women and teenagers of eating habits and body weight gain or loss clearly comes from external sources. That is, if it is being acquired from the media and television productions. (Pastorino, and Doyle-Portillo, 2008).

The research further indicated that youngsters don’t care much of their body weights. In addition, most teenagers ignore exercises in the sense of their life.

Media effect on body weight

According to recent research conducted, mass media has affected most teens negatively in the following ways:

Media Version of physical beauty

The teens are not mindful of the fact that the messages that they are bombed with are finally adapted by them.

Critical viewers

The messages sent to teens through mass media affect them adversely. But they still don’t keep them real with themselves and do not recognize the difference between reality and fiction. (James, 2001)

Creativity

All mass media events are simple construction in that they are meticulously designed to send specific messages to the masses. But most teenagers are not creative enough to realize this. What they do is adopting whatever is thrown to them.

More adverts

Teenagers have not trained their minds to “see” beyond the obvious. But they are only capable of seeing what a given advertisement has intended for them. (James, 2007).

Decision making

Most teenagers are not capable of deciding for themselves what is of their best interest, according to research, and how they will, or will not be affected by what they see on television or in magazines.

Sometimes, a given advertisements is found to be in conflict with what they have dictated, finally they are defeated to ignore that message.

Freedom of expression

Most advertisers are found to force feed youngsters. But the teens are defeated to boycott these products and services or even increase public awareness of offensive and inconsiderate advertisements. (Cohen and Morrison, 2007).

Communications

Most women and youngsters are not capable of making a habit of talking back to negative advertisers. Finally, this affects them negatively since they allow it.

Results and interpretation

By taking into consideration the role of the media and its effects, it clearly indicates that teenager girls are less concerned with their body weight and consequently, with their health in general. This is so because

1. They are not able to make a habit of talking back to negative advertises.
2. They do not know their best interest.
3. They cannot remember that television shows and movies are filled with advertisements.
4. They cannot get creative with their thoughts and realize that all media events are simply constructions.
5. They cannot become critical viewers
6. They cannot realize that media version of physical beauty is narrow and very limited.

Taking action

• The research shows that teen girls should be mindful about the media events they explore when teens make themselves aware of fictitious nature of the advertisements that they are exposed to.
• They should empower themselves not to be affected by the media advertisements again (Trochim and Donnelly, 2006). Just like that, media will lose their power of false adverts.
• If there is something that makes you doubt in anything that is shown in the TV shows and advertisements then there are really positive element of your person that help you rise above advertising falsities. (Myers, 2009)
• Familiarizing yourself with proper deity of your own and avoiding reacting and under eating prevents eating disorders such as anorexia and Binge-eating disorder respectively.
• Teenagers should engage themselves in vigorous exercises as recommended by a physician to prevent Cardiac muscular infectious which might eventually lead to heart failure and consequently to death.
• According to research findings, changes that were found to be more important to teenage girls, like taking keen interest on media adverts, were taken into consideration immediately.
• The research conducted also found that parents should take quick actions with regard to their teenagers by en-lighting them on various health codes and behaviors so that girl teen should not suffer a lot.
• In relation to dietary, the research also found that teen girls should avoid food components with a lot of carbohydrates since this was the major cause of weight gain.
• According to previous research, most teens decided not to eat properly in favor of weight gain. The present research found this conduct and practice to be unethical to teenage girls who practiced it. Since under eating means starving which consequently leads to generation of some harmful disorders such as Bulimia nervosa and Anorexia. Consequently, most girls at the teen ages were found to be having irregular menstruation cycles while others were missing it completely.
• Research has found that most young women and teen girls do not dare much on weight gain and weight loss. They think this is a life style thus take it as a fashion of what men want.

• The research also found that teens think that weight loss and weight gain are a social discovery. Therefore they opted for its adoption.
• Similarly, the research showed that gender sensitivity has given women and teen girls an opportunity not to take advice from men concerning their body weight. This head teen concerning, their body weight. This led teen girls to make decisions, whether there are negative or positive outcomes. (Nairnei, 2010)
• The research indicated that death rate of women to men is very high. Almost at the age of 35 years, most women and teen girls die according to the research.

Date Collection

The researcher preferred mostly the use of face to face interactions since most teenagers in the whole world are comfortable to participate in discussion. This is because teenagers were found to be having more relevant information on the topic of study regardless it was on their side.

The researcher found this important as this ensured high integrity of the information which has few errors or not biased at all.

The researcher also used telephone conversation method during data collection. This was successful since most teens eat during telephone conversations and almost every teen nowadays is possessing at least two mobile phones. Therefore the researcher was able to communicate with them everywhere at any time of the day (day time and night time were both appropriate) (Nevid, 2007)

Conclusion

In conclusion it should be mentioned that according to the research survey, teenage girls should remember that all of them are individuals and they also should understand that media cannot have any power or influence over them (teenage girl) But this may be reversed only if you allow the media to take control over your idea.

Similarly, the researcher recorded that a period of Binge-eating was followed by most girl teenagers. This situation made them to become obese and thus have a high risk of developing cardiac vascular problem and high blood pressure.

They also experience guilt whenever they interacted with their fellow teenagers and experienced distress about their binge -eating which led them (teenage girls) to isolate themselves from others. (Beins, 2004).

References

Beins, B. (2004). Research Methods: A tool for life. Michigan: Pearson/Allyn and Bacon.

Cohen, L., Manion, L. and Morrison, K. (2007). Research Methods in Education. Washington D.C: Routledge.

Eysenck, M. W. (2004). Psychology research. New York: Psychology Press.

James, W. (2001). Psychology: The briefer course. New York: Courier Dover Publications.

James, W. (2007). The Principles of Psychology. New York: Cosimo.

Mcneill, P. and Chapman, S. (2009). Research Methods (3rd ed.). Chicago: Cengage Learning.

Myers, D. G. (2009). Psychology In Modules. New York: Worth Publishers.

Nairnei, J. S. (2010). Psychology. Chicago: Cengage Learning.

Nevid, J. S. (2007). Psychology: Concepts and Applications. Chicago: Cengage Learning.

Pastorino, E. E. and Doyle-Portillo, S. M. (2008). What Is Psychology? Essentials. Chicago: Cengage Learning.

Trochim, W. M. K., and Donnelly, J. P. (2006). Research Methods Knowledge Base. Chicago: Cengage Learning.

Weiten, W. (2010). Psychology: Themes and Variations. Chicago: Cengage Learning.