The relationship of social media addiction and eating disorder in adult individuals

Social media addiction has been associated with an increased risk of eating disorders, particularly among young adults who have easier access to the Internet and spend most of their time on social networks. Increased eating disorders were significantly associated with more Orthorexia nervosa tendencies and Orthorexia nervosa behaviors. However, it is known that the prevalence of orthorexia nervosa is higher, especially in young adults. This work; was planned to determine the relationship between social media addiction and eating disorder in adult individuals 18-65. 561 volunteers (449 female, 112 male) aged 18-65 years participated in the study. The e-survey form was used to determine the demographic characteristics, health information and nutritional habits of the participants, the Social Media Addiction Scale-Adult Form (SMDS-YF) to determine social media addiction, and the ORTO-15 scale to determine the tendency for orthorexia nervosa. The data obtained were statistically evaluated in the SPSS 21.0 package program. Statistical significance was accepted as p<0,05 in all analyzes. 80,9% of the participants were found to have orthorexia nervosa and 19,1% were normal. Significant relationships were found between orthorexia nervosa, social media addiction, weight, BMI (body mass index), and age (p<0,05). Significant relationships were found between social media addiction and age and weight (p<0,05). As the virtual tolerance score and virtual communication score increased, the emotional domain sub-score was found to be very weakly significant (p<0,05). Our data suggest that more and larger studies are needed on social media addiction and orthorexia nervosa.