Experts have discovered that teenage girls disliking their bodies has less to do with thin ideals in television or social media and more likely to be influenced by those around them.
US researchers compared the effects of peers and the media on girls' body dissatisfaction, eating disorder symptoms, and life satisfaction in general.
They asked 237 young girls, aged ten to 17, to name their three favourite television shows and to rate how attractive the female actresses in those shows were, the 'Daily Mail' reported.
They also looked at their body weight and height, whether or not they had feelings of inferiority when they compared themselves to other girls (peer competition), and how often they used social media.
The girls were then asked about how they felt about their own bodies, whether they had any eating disorder symptoms, and how satisfied they were with their lives.
Six months later, the researchers repeated these measures in 101 teenage girls from the initial group.
On the whole, neither television exposure to thin ideals nor social media use led to body dissatisfaction compared to the long-term effect of peer pressure.
The study, published in Journal of Youth and Adolescence, also found that both peer competition and social media use led to lower life satisfaction.
"Our results suggest that only peer competition, not television or social media use, predict negative outcomes for body image," lead author Dr Christopher Ferguson, from Texas A&M International University in the US, said.
"This suggests that peer competition is more salient to body and eating issues in teenage girls," Ferguson said.
"Social media use may provide a new arena for peer competition, even if it does not directly influence negative body outcomes," he said.
