Covid, home confinement, and social media combine into soaring cases of eating disorders

The Covid-19 pandemic, and the period of home confinement and social distancing that came with it, had a serious detrimental effect on the mental health of many. 

This, coupled with an intensified exposure to social media, as many didn’t leave their homes for long stretches during the health crisis, has had many negative consequences in society. Among these issues has been an increased prevalence of eating disorders. 

“We have probably doubled the group of younger patients,” says Dr. Teia Plana, coordinator of the juvenile eating disorders unit at Hospital Clínic in Barcelona. 

The psychiatrist and other experts consulted by the Catalan News Agency (ACN) affirm that while Covid saw diagnoses in all age groups increase, there are other factors at play that explain why eating disorders are at such high levels in increasingly younger patients. 

Before the pandemic, just over 2,000 new cases of eating disorders were diagnosed in Catalonia each year, the majority of which being anorexia and bulimia (nearly 70% of all cases). After the outbreak of the coronavirus, diagnoses increased by around 50%, and today they still remain around 3,000 each year, according to the sources consulted. 

While the pandemic was a trigger for the increase in cases, experts say that such disorders are “normally multi-causal,” but none doubt that the confinement had a huge impact on the mental health of young people. 

“We always ask patients if there was an initial moment, such as the death of a family member, a trip, and in the last two years, Covid has been an important factor,” says Reyes Raspall, co-director of SETCA, a private center in Barcelona that treats people with ED. 

Between 2018 and 2023, 45% of diagnoses have occurred among minors, according to data from the Department of Health obtained by ACN, which also show that around a third more are aged between 18 and 34. Limiting it to the years of the pandemic and immediately following, the incidence among minors is even higher, accounting for more than half (54.2%) of new diagnoses in 2021. 

In addition, Teia Plana of Hospital Clínic, explains that it used to be very rare for patients of prepubertal age, between 10-12 years old, to come to her. “Now it is starting to be a little more frequent, we have probably doubled this group of younger patients,” she says. However, most new cases that come to her are 14-15 years old. 

Social media factor 

Dr. Plana believes that not everything can be attributed to Covid: the emergence of social networks and premature access to mobile phones appear as another major factor. “It certainly has something to do with the fact that, suddenly, children at very early ages are on all these networks all the time,” she says.

“Before, we didn't have all this constant visualization, this world of images in which patients are at greater risk of continuous comparisons. and relating to people they would never otherwise meet, of different ages to their own, of different economic levels, different interests,” she says. “Surely we need to regulate the networks better.”

Reyes Raspall thinks that, both among young girls and adult patients, “there is excessive use of TikTok as an information search engine,” and warns of the existence of content “with very pathological behaviors, with a point of exhibitionism.”