Desórdenes del comportamiento alimentario y exposición a los medios de comunicación en chicas adolescentes de secundaria

Abstract

Objective: To examine the relationship between exposure to mass media and body dissatisfaction and pathological attitudes toward food. Sample: A representative sample of teenage girls in their third and fourth years of Compulsory Secondary School (ESO) in Spain. Instruments: Media Exposure Questionnaire (total exposure and frequency of exposure to television programmes, specialised magazines, and specific contents of television and magazines); Body Dissatisfaction (BD of the EDI-2); Eating Attitudes Test-26 (EAT-26). Results: No connections are found between the psychological variables studied and the frequency of total exposure to the mass media, neither during the week nor during the weekend. Differences are found, however, between these variables and the frequency of exposure to certain television programmes and magazines. In addition, girls who present more pathological attitudes toward food watch and read the sections of magazines and television programmes associated with body image with greater frequency, while exposure to this type of media is less often associated with body dissatisfaction.