Paris, France – A recent report from the French National Agency for Food, Environmental and Occupational Health Safety (Anses) confirms what research has increasingly suggested: social media can have detrimental effects on adolescent mental health, amplifying existing vulnerabilities. The report, published in December 2025, highlights a complex issue that extends beyond simple moralizing or regulation, suggesting a need for a more nuanced approach focused on understanding adolescent motivations and behaviors.
Adolescents are now daily users of social media platforms. These digital spaces are not merely venues for expression or socialization. they are saturated environments filled with idealized images, social norms, and powerful mechanisms of influence.
The Anses report echoes findings from a research project, ALIMNUM, funded by the French National Research Agency (ANR), which identified key preventative levers. The report establishes that social media significantly impacts body image, self-esteem, and the mental health of adolescent girls, with an influence robust enough to be considered a verified health risk.
The Anses conclusions are based on hundreds of international studies. They demonstrate that highly visual platforms – Instagram, Snapchat, and TikTok – foster well-known mechanisms: internalization of unrealistic body ideals, self-objectification, and a progressive decline in self-esteem.
These effects begin as early as ages 9-11 and intensify during adolescence, with girls being significantly more affected than boys.
Massive Exposure to Unrealistic Body Images
This confirmation comes at a time of unprecedented intensity in digital usage. The Credoc Digital Barometer shows that 75% of internet users access social media daily, a trend particularly pronounced among 12-17 year olds, with 58% connecting daily.
Girls are recognized as the most assiduous users: 48% consult social networks at least once a day, compared to 41% of boys. This difference is significant, determining exposure to a visual and social environment that, according to Anses, permanently reconfigures how adolescent girls perceive their bodies.
“In real life too, I’d like to have a filter” – Social networks as seen by 8-12 year olds
This dynamic exposes young girls to a continuous flow of content presenting bodies that conform to unrealistic ideals, promoting photo retouching and filters, emphasizing hypersexualization, encouraging upward social comparison (comparing oneself to those perceived as “more beautiful,” thinner, or more perfect), disseminating unverified nutritional advice, and promoting “transformation” routines that blend wellness with a pressure to perform.
An Algorithmic Spiral Amplifying Adolescent Vulnerabilities
A key contribution of the Anses report is confirming the role of algorithms in exposing adolescent girls to health risks. When interacting with content related to thinness, fitness, or restrictive diets, these algorithms multiply such content, creating a seemingly endless cycle.
The pervasive “healthy” trend on social media cultivates an ideal of bodily discipline, athletic performance, and controlled eating. An example cited by the agency shows that TikTok recommends content related to eating disorders in less than eight minutes when an account behaves like a 13-year-old.
This algorithmic personalization creates a spiral where physical insecurities are reinforced, sometimes leading to psychological distress. Longitudinal studies link these usage patterns to increased symptoms of anxiety and depression, sleep disturbances, and increased exposure to cyberbullying.
Adding to this is a paradox highlighted by CREDOC: despite high exposure to toxic interactions, only 34% of 12-17 year olds report having used reporting mechanisms. Adolescent girls remain vulnerable, failing to utilize tools designed to protect them.
Understanding Behaviors to Better Prevent Risks
In light of this data, social marketing emerges as a particularly useful scientific field for identifying levers for action. It offers a relevant framework for designing prevention strategies rooted in the real practices of young people.
Unlike moralizing or purely regulatory discourse, social marketing prioritizes a comprehensive approach based on the motivations underlying consumer behaviors: why do adolescent girls post selfies? Why do they seek “likes”? Why do they spend hours comparing themselves to others? Why do parents and educators struggle to intervene?
Research in social marketing provides several answers in this area. Adolescents use social media to belong to a group, control their image, and obtain social recognition that they sometimes lack in real life. These motivations, natural at this age, become problematic when the digital environment amplifies them.
Social marketing emphasizes the need to work with – and not against – these motivations. It recommends supporting rather than controlling, focusing on levers such as co-constructing rules for digital usage and promoting critical thinking towards retouched images.
It relies on a fine segmentation of target audiences: highly active adolescent girls, passive users, overwhelmed parents, teachers, and healthcare professionals. Each of these audiences requires tailored messages, rather than a uniform prevention approach, to enhance the effectiveness of actions taken.
Creating a Social Environment Conducive to Media Education
This approach is being mobilized within the framework of the MEALS participatory science project, also funded by the ANR, which examines the effects of social networks on the eating habits of young people. Young people are not merely subjects of study; they collaborate in the research to understand this phenomenon.
With this innovative method, MEALS aims to create tools to develop critical thinking skills towards digital content and co-construct prevention messages tailored to young people, so that social networks are allies – not traps – in public health. The project seeks to identify behaviors, segment based on motivations, and encourage not total disconnection – an unrealistic goal – but rather a reflexive use of social networks.
our young co-researchers are invited to propose alternative activities offering the same social benefits as digital platforms: spaces for empowering expression, sports collectives, non-competitive workshops, and creative projects where peer feedback plays a positive role in identity construction.
Specifically, through this project, we do not seek to eliminate social networks from the daily lives of young people but to revisit their practices, using the digital content they frequent to transform it into moments of social connection. This could involve recreating a recipe found on TikTok, debating a video by a content creator, creating a play featuring an influencer, or writing a post as part of a writing workshop.
More broadly, in light of the health risks highlighted by the Anses report, the challenge is to create opportunities for collective reflection on the use of digital media. This is an approach to explore in order to educate future generations.
The ALIMNUM and MEALS projects are supported by the French National Research Agency (ANR), which funds research projects in France. The ANR’s mission is to support and promote the development of fundamental and applied research in all disciplines, and to strengthen the dialogue between science and society. For more information, visit the ANR website.
