Friends’ pictures on social media have biggest impact on body image

Seeing friends’ carefully curated selfies on Facebook is more likely to induce feelings of guilt or shame among young women, and lead to unnecessary dieting, than images of models or celebrities they see in magazines.

Academics found that young women are more likely to compare their appearance with that of their peers’ images on social media than they were with celebrities on TV, adverts or other forms of traditional media. When they then make an unfavourable comparison with the other woman they are looking at, the impact is more pronounced when the image is on social media.

Women are also more likely to diet and do exercise when negative comparisons take place on sites such as Facebook or Instagram, the research found. The vast majority of study participants were not overweight and did not need to diet.

Researchers said the study, which will appear in March in the journal Body Image, has implications for how schools should teach young people about the influences that might affect their self-esteem.

Jasmine Fardouly, lead researcher at the centre for emotional health at Macquarie University, Sydney, said there are several reasons why social media may be more damaging than traditional media. “Celebrities may seem more distanced and their appearance may seem less attainable than people you work with or see regularly.”

The study, which questioned about 150 young women who completed five daily surveys over a five-day period, found that participants overwhelmingly considered themselves less attractive than the people they saw both online and in traditional media.

The negative impact that thin models and airbrushed adverts have on young women has been a source of concern for decades, but increasing attention is being paid to the role of social media. Around 70% of women aged 18 to 35 regularly edit their images before posting them – as do 50% of men in the same age group, according to research by the Renfrew Center Foundation, a US organisation that specialises in tackling eating disorders. Airbrushing on social media has become commonplace: Samsung users have reported that their phones default to a “beauty” mode that alters their faces and smooths out imperfections.

Last month Be Real, a national campaign, was launched to improve body confidence by providing resources to schools, as well as calling on the diet industry, media and businesses to promote different body shapes and sizes. The campaign was launched in response to a report by the all-party parliamentary group on body image which found that girls as young as five were worrying about their appearance.

Natasha Devon, the former children’s mental health champion, and co-founder of the Self-Esteem Team, said that PSHE (personal, social and health education classes in schools) – which cover topics such as body image – should be made compulsory, if these issues are to be taught properly.

Friends’ pictures on social media have biggest impact on body image

How To Get Your Friends and Escape Stress & Anxiety Together?

Life is a highly complex and challenging concept. People deal with life in different ways, and they end up in very different places for that. In reverse, you can be sure that there are also a lot of people that find themselves in the same situation, because we’re all different, but not very different at the same time, if that makes sense.

One aspect of life is how it tends to make us prone to stress accumulation. Depending on how well you’ve made things for yourself in life, you can still be subject to stress and anxiety, and other similar symptoms that no one wants to have to deal with. If you are living a very successful life, there might be less frequent and less intense cases of stress accumulation, but that doesn’t mean you are experiencing continuous bliss.  Maybe you’ve experienced a tragedy or have been witness to one, or maybe you are just having a really hard time lately when it comes to work.

Like we’ve said, you’re never alone and despite how you might feel, there are a lot of people going through the same thing. Speaking of other people, one particular group of people you should focus on are your friends. You talk to them on a regular basis and do things together, but did you know you could actually do stuff with your friends that will help you overcome your not so cool mood or state of spirit?

Join us for the rest of this article, as we explore some of the things you can do with friends, and how you can make the most out of them to overcome the blues or rough period you’re facing.

Agriculture

Have you ever considered gardening? A cool way to spend more time with your friends is by opening a garden together. It’s up to you how big or small it would be, and what would grow inside. Gardening is a known form of reducing anxiety. Seeing things grow out of your own work and dedication can be very satisfying and rewarding for the mind and spirit. And vegetables don’t grow instantly, so you can spend the time with friends while you’re all tending to the garden. Bring a good book or some games and make the most of it.

Traveling

One influential factor in stress and anxiety increase is spending too much time in one place. You need to get out of the house, get some fresh air, or maybe just change the scenery for a while. Get a car, pack some clothes, food and some clothes, and head to a location where you can all relax in each other’s company. Somewhere with a lot of sunlight, maybe, and a beach. Or maybe a snowy mountain with some skiing if that’s more your thing.

That being said, it’s important to know that when dealing with stress or anxiety, there’s always a way out.  And by engaging in these activities with your friends by your side, you can create stronger bonds and free your mind, all in the same experience. It wouldn’t be a bad idea to immortalize the moment either. Pictures tend to last a long time, and having the possibility of revisiting that moment whenever you want is a great thing to have.

Author byline:

John Matthew working as digital marketing expert since 2008, he started his career as social media professional with NTD Telecommunications. John played a vital role in developing following brands freecnaclasses.net and dontpayfull.com and much more. He loves to exercise, yoga, my twin daughters, dailyforex.com, encouraging quotes, sleeping in colder rooms, bunk beds, acne spot treatment, the internet, hiking shoes for women, web hosting and traveling to new places.

How To Get Your Friends and Escape Stress & Anxiety Together?

Happiness depends on health and friends, not money, says new study

Most human misery can be blamed on failed relationships and physical and mental illness rather than money problems and poverty, according to a landmark study by a team of researchers at the London School of Economics (LSE).

Eliminating depression and anxiety would reduce misery by 20% compared to just 5% if policymakers focused on eliminating poverty, the report found.

Lord Richard Layard, who led the report, said on average people have become no happier in the last 50 years, despite average incomes more than doubling.

The economist and former adviser to Tony Blair and Gordon Brown said the study, called Origins of Happiness, showed that measuring people’s satisfaction with their lives should be a priority for every government. The researchers analysed data from four countries including the US and Germany.

Extra spending on reducing mental illness would be self-financing, the researchers added, because it would be recovered by the government through higher employment and increased tax receipts together with a reduction in NHS costs from fewer GP visits and hospital A&E admissions.

“Tackling depression and anxiety would be four times as effective as tackling poverty. It would also pay for itself,” he said.

The report supports the arguments put forward by Layard over several decades that social and psychological factors are more important to the wellbeing of individuals than income levels.

“Having a partner is as good for you as being made unemployed is bad for you,” he said.

The report claims that state-run organisations, including schools, must become more focused on tackling anxiety and mental health issues.

“This evidence demands a new role for the state – not ‘wealth creation’ but ‘wellbeing creation’,” Layard said. “In the past, the state has successively taken on poverty, unemployment, education and physical health. But equally important now are domestic violence, alcoholism, depression and anxiety conditions, alienated youth, exam mania and much else. These should become centre stage.”

The economist said it was a curse on children that they were judged by society solely on their educational attainment. The report adds: “The strongest factor predicting a happy adult life is not children’s qualifications but their emotional health. There is also powerful evidence that schools have a big impact on children’s emotional health, and which school a child goes to will affect their emotional wellbeing as much as it affects their exam performance.”

Layard rejected accusations that he was arguing against closing income inequalities but said improvements in mental health services would have a greater impact.

The health secretary, Jeremy Hunt, has pledged to increase funding for mental health services. In September he said the care offered to children and young people was the service’s biggest weakness.

But the Department of Health admitted last month that the number of mental health nurses working in the NHS in England has dropped by almost a sixth since the Conservatives came to power in 2010, from 45,384 in England to 38,774 in July this year.

The report will be presented to a conference in London on Monday that has been organised by the LSE and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.

Happiness depends on health and friends, not money, says new study

Are Frequent Fights With Friends And Family Linked To An Early Death?

If you are susceptible to bickering with individuals close to you, a new study suggests that you might want to operate on that. The investigation, published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Local community Overall health, reports a strong website link amongst the volume of arguing a individual does and the chance of dying from any result in above the up coming 10 many years. Being a guy and becoming out of operate manufactured the connection stronger. But across the board, there was a important association among mortality and the frequency of arguments with family members, buddies, and even neighbors.

The review, out of the University of Cogenhagen, followed practically ten,000 men and women, aged 36-52, for 11 many years. The researchers asked them about their social relationships, paying special consideration to which of the individuals in their lives tended to be linked with the most arguments. In excess of the course of the review, 196 girls and 226 males died. About half of the deaths were due to cancer, and the other half from heart condition, accidents, and suicides.

Individuals who reported more arguing with their spouses or young children were 50% to 100% far more most likely to die from any cause at all. Individuals who reported frequent arguing with anyone in their social circle – including pals, family members, and neighbors – have been two to 3 times far more very likely to die above the following decade. The outcomes held strong even when variables like depression, gender, marital standing, continual wellness problems, offered emotional support, and socioeconomic standing were removed from the equation.

Males had been especially vulnerable to the health results of arguing – in other phrases, men who tended to argue a whole lot had a chance of death that was above and beyond the usual chance connected with getting male. Individuals who have been unemployed had been also more vulnerable to the effects of arguing, which is exciting but not sudden.

Intuitively, the connection might not be so surprising, but the question is what biological mechanisms may well describe it. A single likelihood is that frequent arguing triggers the tension response and the cascade of adverse effects that follows.

“Stressful relations have been associated with heightened proinflammatory cytokine exercise,” the authors compose, which suggests that the immune technique might be involved. “It consequently would seem plausible that at least element of the association among nerve-racking relations and overall health may possibly be mediated by pressure-responsive methods.”

As constantly, the caveat is that there is no proof of lead to and result: The review does not “prove” that arguing with your husband or wife leads to an early death. It could, theoretically, be the other way round – that folks who are less healthier to start with argue much more. But this looks significantly less most likely. Much more feasible is the concept that the tension of arguing could be linked to mortality by way of the tension/immune mechanisms mentioned above.

In any case, even if you are susceptible to arguing, not all is lost. But learning to handle your anger, specially when it comes to your near relationships, is possibly smart. “Intervening in conflicts, especially for those out of function, may possibly assist to curb premature deaths associated with social romantic relationship stressors,” said study writer Rikke Lund. And even if it does not lengthen your daily life by several many years, managing your feelings can only help your relationships – and your husband or wife will certainly enjoy a much less argumentative model of you.

Adhere to me @alicewalton or uncover me on Facebook.

Are Frequent Fights With Friends And Family Linked To An Early Death?

Council matchmaking: should councils aid us make friends?

Relationships are very good for us in a lot of techniques. Some of them blindingly apparent, others less so. Photograph: PhotosIndia.com LLC te /Alamy

Should government care about our relationships? Traditionally this question has been framed in terms of social conservatism and liberalism, an argument about whether or not the state need to privilege specific forms of relationships, notably marriage and the nuclear loved ones, over other people.

Increasingly we are seeing that rather of this social and moral argument there are great factors why government (and neighborhood government in certain) need to be concerned about the variety and top quality, although not, in truth, the kind of our relationships.

That’s since relationships are good for us in many techniques – some of them blindingly obvious, other folks much less so. Whilst it could be clear to us how intimate relationships, household and friends contribute to (or occasionally detract from) our nicely becoming, research more than the past decade has proven how relationships and social networks also support a selection of public items.

The American social scientists Christakis and Fowler have proven how both positive phenomena such as happiness and offering up smoking, and adverse ones such as weight problems, are transmitted through social networks. Investigation by the University of Brighton and others has proven that amounts of social interaction are 1 of the biggest determinants of wellbeing in previous age, far more critical even than physical health, and a vital portion of assisting men and women to dwell independently for longer.

Communities with substantial amounts of social capital, that is large levels of social connection, have greater outcomes in relation to wellness, educational attainment and social cohesion than communities in which social ties are weaker.

The nature of these relationships is not important: what counts is their variety and their strength.

This matters because we want a wholesale preventative shift if we are to handle the extended term crisis of demand and resource in public solutions. This is particularly accurate for neighborhood government which is responsible for those policy regions: care of the elderly, public well being, developing regional economies, in which innovation is most required.

Put crudely, if the last twenty years has been about regional government moving from delivering solutions to commissioning them, the up coming 20 many years will be about moving from commissioning companies to working with communities so that fewer providers are essential.

But even though public bodies are happy to advise us about consuming our five a day, cutting out the cigarettes and booze and investing in our pensions, they do not see it as their place to counsel us to commit a lot more time with our close friends, invest in our social networks and nurture our families.

But, arguably, these items, much more than any other people, will contribute most to our wellbeing (and reduce our need for pricey state assistance) above the lengthy term. So probably nearby councils ought to feel as much about relationships as about companies.

Of program, there are also useful factors that neighborhood authorities can do to construct sociability into communities, by way of planning, housing and the management of public space, and through versatile occupation creation and financial growth techniques. They can shift to the sort of personalised care that makes it possible for social speak to to be commissioned as an outcome, and they can look for to greater understand the networks of informal care and help that already exist in every single neighborhood and “piggyback” public providers on these.

But all of this requires a distinct way of considering about what a local authority is and what it is for. This contemplating is still in its infancy, but it’s getting to be more and more urgent.

Jonathan Carr-West is the chief executive of the Local Government Information Unit.

• Want your say? E mail sarah.marsh@theguardian.com to propose contributions to the network

Not presently a member? Join us now for far more comment, examination and the latest occupation options in nearby government.

Council matchmaking: should councils aid us make friends?

"My close friends do not know what it"s in fact like to reside with it"

But, thanks to the children’s charity Chicks, Max has been capable to go on holiday three times above the final five many years. Every single was a week-long break with 17 other young carers or youngsters from challenging homes, most of whom had never had a vacation ahead of.

“I get to bond with people my age and it gives me some time to get away from caring for Jake and some freedom,” says Max. He grins as he tells me about the actions on offer: entire body-boarding, rock-climbing, riding, swimming and playing games with the volunteers and employees.

“It builds your self-assurance a lot due to the fact you can go up to men and women and make close friends, and it’s less complicated than being at property caught with Jake and carrying out issues for him. Your mum’s not there to say, ‘Max, do this, do that.’ You can just be yourself really.”

It is not just about the pursuits, even though: each meal at the Chicks retreats in Devon and Cornwall is residence-cooked and the kids consume collectively at a table, some thing that numerous of them have never ever carried out at house. There is no tv, no net and no mobile phones are allowed.

Now in its 21st yr, the charity hopes to increase £1.4 million to carry on helping about one,200 disadvantaged kids among the ages of eight and 15 all through 2014, as it receives no government funding.

“Places like Chicks give the kids a break to just be standard children,” Mandy says. 4 of her young children have now benefited from the charity’s respite breaks, and she has noticed the variation it tends to make to the whole loved ones. “It’s very good for them. When Max comes back he’s usually really self-assured.”

Nonetheless, every single of the 3 times he has gone away with Chicks, Max has woken up worrying about Jake. “The 1st or second day I thought, ‘Is Jake there, do I need to have to do that’, then I think, ‘Ah no, it is all right.’

“Then you get used to it and when you come house it’s a bit of a shock: I require to do this swift and Jake’s screaming again. He cannot tell you what’s incorrect with him. If he even now cries, you don’t know what to do. It is just tough.”

And, as Jake gets older, it is turning out to be even harder. The family now uses a hoist to lift him in and out of his bed, simply because he is also hefty to carry, and they are usually aware that he is terminally sick. Over Christmas 2012, Jake had to be positioned on daily life assistance for a fortnight and considering that then he has been in and out of hospital.

“I get unhappy, but I really do not cry,” says Max. “It’s tough on you since you do not know if he’s going to make it and it is your brother. I try out not to feel of it also considerably, and just be a regular youthful person. If something occurs I’ll phone my mate and try out to consider my mind off it as much as I can.”

Yet it isn’t the identical as being with young children who can truly recognize his residence lifestyle – 1 of the motives he loves Chicks. “We can speak about each and every other’s lives, what’s going on and how they cope with it,” he says. “My friends really do not know what it is actually like to dwell with it, but men and women at Chicks do.”

Now that Max is about to flip 16, he can no longer attend a Chicks camp, but he hopes to return as a volunteer. “After looking right after Jake, I’m really very good with children,” he laughs. “I want to bond with them genuinely nicely and I guess just make them have a very good time like I did.”

Chicks is one particular of three charities supported by the Telegraph Christmas Appeal, which closes on on January 31. To make a donation please check out http://www.telegraph.co.united kingdom/information/telegraphchristmasappeal/

"My close friends do not know what it"s in fact like to reside with it"

Friends are a unwanted fat whole lot of excellent if you are attempting to get rid of fat

Guys emerged as the principal anti-diet regime villains, with 39 per cent willing to sabotage excess weight loss attempts, in contrast with 20 per cent of females.

Whilst 36 per cent of people surveyed explained they attempted to scupper friends’ diet programs due to the fact they talked also significantly about their consuming regime, a quarter mentioned they reacted that way since they had been bored with dieters’ grumpiness.

It appears that the green-eyed monster could also be to blame for their diet plan-destroying tricks.

According to the survey, 14 per cent of respondents feel jealous when they see a buddy shedding the lbs, while 20 per cent admitted feeling undesirable about themselves as they watched the diet plan progress.

One in 10 said that they did not discover calorie counting buddies fun.

But although the survey exposed that 21 per cent of us pick to lose bodyweight to impress a loved 1, probably bored excess weight-watchers might get comfort from the fact that their buddies uncover them a lot more attractive when they are not obsessed about foods.

Lisa Jones, a 27-year-previous office worker from Southampton, Hants, stated: “Whenever my friends start a new diet program they instantaneously turn into boring. It’s really irritating.

“They are so concerned about what they eat and drink, they end up just staying in their front area, viewing tv.

“We never ever go out for a great day or meal, and we never ever go on a night out while they are dieting, it is this kind of a shame.”

• Eating junk food provides kids a large stomach even if they perform a lot of sport, according to analysis.

A review of 224 teens located that people who ate the most body fat had rounder stomachs irrespective of the quantity of workout they did.

The researchers looked at the position of dietary unwanted fat, or lipid, in the construct up of the teenagers’ abdominal excess fat, the most hazardous as it increases the risk of suffering from situations this kind of as diabetes.

Excess fat was measured making use of a machine that provides muscle and fat mass details.

Dietary routines and bodily activity had been also assessed.

Dr Idoia Labayen, of the University of the Basque Country, stated: “Until now it was imagined even with an unbalanced diet regime, you by some means compensated for it if you acquired a lot of physical exercising. In this review we have shown that this is not the situation.”

The findings are published in the journal Clinical Nutrition.

Friends are a unwanted fat whole lot of excellent if you are attempting to get rid of fat