The proliferation of digital media in our society is a fascinating thing to look at. Never have we been so connected to the outside world, so aware of the plights of the people around us. However, we also use it in curious ways.
Across social media in particular, it is common for users to use digital content as a means to keep their brains busy, and I’ll use the popular YouTube channel, Smosh Pit, as an example of this. Within the comment section of their hugely popular series ‘Smosh Reads Reddit Stories’, some of the most common and popular comments include phrases such as “this is huge for people w[ith] unfolded laundry on their beds” (Smosh Pit, 2026). and “As an adult, smosh is the equivalent of Saturday morning cartoons for me”(Smosh Pit, 2025). There has long been a common phrase said on that channel however, “Take your pancakes out.. it’s Saturday morning!”(Smosh Pit, 2024).
Why do people always look at their phones when doing chores? Why do people look at their televisions and phones to relax? Why do people look at their phones when eating meals?
This trend continues across YouTube Comments such as “Bro knows exactly when I’m eating”(JxmyHighroller, 2026), and “Finally, my food was getting moldy”(The Right Opinion, 2026), when videos are first released are extremely common, especially across long form videos. Why is this the case, and is consuming food while watching screens necessarily harmful? At what point should we know when to limit this content? When should we stop?
Taken from the Journal of Psychiatric Research, “Studies have confirmed the link between altered dietary intake and eating disorders (EDs)”(Jenkins et al., 2024).
The first eating disorder to be included in The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the worldwide standard for mental health disorders, was anorexia nervosa(Himmerich et al., 2024). For the past 70 years, the number of eating disorders officially recognised has still been growing, the latest been recognised included Binge Eating disorder and different types of Feeding Disorders in 2013(Eating Disorders Australia, 2019). This also means that more people are being diagnosed than ever before. The graph below is collated from data from a research paper from the 2025 edition of the Journal of Affective Disorders, a peer-reviewed medical journal documenting behaviour and mental disorders, taken from the GDB(Global Burden of Disease). The different subgroup categories include Sex, Age, SDI(socio-demographic index), and Region (Xu et al., 2025).
Data taken from (Xu et al., 2025)
From this data, we can see that eating disorder prevalence has risen drastically in adolescents and young adults; globally, eating disorders have risen by 15% in the past 30 years. The older adolescents get and the higher their SDI index, the more likely they are to develop an eating disorder. Furthermore, those born within European regions and the region of the Americas are more likely than other regions to develop eating disorders. Australia would reside within the western pacific region, and the region has similar results to the global average. The Butterfly foundation, an Australian nationally backed support service for those in need of aid for eating disorders and body image issues, has seen a 21% increase in Australians recognised to be living with eating disorders from 2012 to 2023(Butterfly Foundation, 2024)(Health, 2026). Research paper’s conclusion states that there needs to be an ‘urgent need[] for early detection, accessible treatment, and culturally tailored public health interventions’ and that the global prevalence of eating disorders is expected to increase by at least 4% by 2040.
What can we take from this report, what can we do to educate ourselves on eating disorders? We know that disordered eating leads to eating disorders, but how does that help? To help the over a million people within Australia that suffer from eating disorders(Butterfly Foundation, 2024)? Especially those who are most vulnerable?
The everyday Australian can be educated on how to detect the warning signs of someone with disordered eating. It has been shown that early detection for disordered eating is beneficial for preventing eating disorders within populations(Koreshe et al., 2023). Research on eating disorders has expanded significantly over the past 5 decades (Hoek, 2025), but that does not mean that we do not stop searching for treatment, especially as the use of a digital content has become so prevalent in our society. The television was popularised in the 1950s (HistoryNG, 2026), the IBM Personal computer in 1984 and the first iPhone was first introduced in 2009.
With an invention so recently introduced in our modern world, is there correlation between screen use and eating disorders? How about those who grew up looking at screens? Their brains have not had enough time to develop. Gen Z and especially Gen Alpha are the most at risk, Gen Alpha (born between 2010 and 2025) are consuming, on average, 4 hours a day of recreational screen time usage(PricewaterhouseCoopers, 2026). The graph below is interactive, so you can find more results of the study on further viewing.
The data collected is from a systematic review article published in 2025 named ‘A systematic review on the eating behaviors of youth exceeding electronic device recommendations’. Sixteen studies, all examined to ensure quality (such as a low risk assessment and high evidence level) were analysed to determine whether there is a link between disordered eating and screen usage within children (Coleman et al., 2025).
Taken directly the review article ‘There is overwhelming evidence that excessive screen use is correlated with disordered eating habits at large’. ‘Both clinicians and public health officials alike should… mak[e] recommendations for healthy amounts of screen time for children and adolescents’. ‘More studies are needed to establish firm links between different types of screen time and disordered eating habits’(Coleman et al., 2025).
What do I do now? I had no idea that eating in front of screens was linked to disordered eating. It makes sense, people my age generally eat in front of screens, I don’t remember the last time I’ve eaten food without being stimulated, whether at a restaurant, going camping or even eating food in my room on my phone.
Does this all mean everyone in my generation has disordered eating and/or eating disorders? Of course not. But this information is not widespread public knowledge, and this discovery is a recent development to the science world. I think of the people my age, my friends, my family, strangers, we all do this. What would it look like for us to stop?
Is there any research we can look at to help?
Gender: 0=men, 1 = women. Data taken from (He et al., 2024)
There were some interesting results in this research report, taken from “Associations between screen use while eating and eating disorder symptomatology: Exploring the roles of mindfulness and intuitive eating”, a lot of which confirming what we already know. That women experience more eating disorder symptomatology than men and that being young is correlated with social media usage.
The result with the highest correlation coefficient (meaning the variables that are the most associated) regarding eating disorder symptomatology; it is correlated with lower levels of intuitive eating (-0.56). According to this report’s definition, intuitive eating refers to ‘adaptive eating behaviors characterised by relying on body cues of hunger and satiety’. It’s proof that we need to be more aware of our eating habits, as it could lead to disordered eating. There was also a small-to-medium negative association between screen use while eating and intuitive eating (r = -0.21), as well as a close-to-medium negative association with mindfulness (r = -0.27). This suggests that greater screen use while eating was associated with lower levels of intuitive eating and mindfulness. (He et al., 2024).
To touch on the topic of mindfulness, it is a topic that comes up repeatedly in research to help prevent disordered eating habits. It’s even used to help with eating disorders, within the report it was shown that higher mindfulness has a both a medium to large effect on higher intuitive eating(r = 0.42) and lower eating disorder symptomatically (r = 0.36). ‘Mindfulness refers to the ability to pay attention to the present moment in a non-judgmental way’(He et al., 2024). To me, being aware of your surroundings seems like the best way we can help us avoid these disordered eating habits, habits that may turn to later issues in the future without early detection. This might mean, getting off our phones for a while when eating, being able to understand our habits when eating etc.
Maybe the boomers were right to tell us to get off our phones.
Within the discussion of the report there are some fascinating discoveries found on social media use and eating.
‘[There are] potential[y] indirect roles of mindfulness and intuitive eating in association between screen use while eating and eating disorder symptomatology. Notably, the indirect effects of mindfulness and intuitive eating were partial, which suggests that there could be other process factors. For instance, emotions induced by exposure to media content and emotional eating might be such process factors (He, Fu et al., 2023). Specifically, individuals who use screens while eating are intensively exposed to media content (e.g., films, videos, and texts) which can induce emotions (Baveye, Bettinelli, Dellandréa, Chen, & Chamaret, 2013; Liu et al., 2017; Pekrun, 2022). According to the theoretical model of how emotions affect eating behaviors (Macht, 2008), emotion arousal can change eating behaviors in multiple ways, such as by interfering with eating behaviors directly and by regulating emotions via eating behaviors (i.e., emotional eating). Also, considering the close links of both emotions and emotional eating with disordered eating (Fox, 2009; Stark, & Katariina, 2001), it is plausible that emotions and emotional eating may also potentially explain the link between screen use while eating and disordered eating. However, it should be noted that the emotions induced by media content exposure might be a state of emotion (i.e., how the individuals feel at the moment; Yiend, 2016) and can change in different episodes of eating while using screens.’
How much has social media impacted the way we eat food? Is doomscrolling, the process of viewing excessive online content that induces intense emotion, not only impact our mental health, but our stomachs as well? Doomscrolling is a practice that 64 percent of Americans say they partake in. This number increases to 81 percent for Gen Z(Fike, 2025).
It’s a scary thing to think about, the ways we have been impacted by social media companies, has extended beyond our phones, but now impacts out very physiology.
I cannot sit here and tell you that mindfulness will solve issues around disordered eating nor eating disorders. There are so many different ways to treat mental health related issues, whether it be medical professionals like psychologists, psychiatrists, ER nurses, medication and/or recreational drugs. If there is one thing that I want you to take away from this article is that this is an issue not discussed often enough, not researched enough, and not as known about as it should be. Roughly 5.78 billion of us are smartphones users(Kumar, 2023), and it is not public knowledge that a higher screen usage can lead to disordered eating.
What is a treatment that someone reading this article, understanding that they might have issues surrounding disordered eating and screen usage, do right now?
Below is a graph from results taken from a 2018 article about mindfulness-based treatment targeting eating disorders. The goal of the meta-analysis was to evaluate whether mindful-based eating disorder prevention programs were effective.
Data taken from (Beccia et al., 2018).
Is mindfulness our only solution? No, of course not. But it might play a part in separating ourselves from a technology that has controlled us, has controlled me almost all my life. I’m so young, I’m not even 21, and it makes me worried that I have wasted a childhood staring at a screen. We need to be more involved with friends and family, we need to strive to improve our life, to make us happier and to appreciate the world just a little bit more.
Digital technology has truly transformed the way we live, work, connect, and the way we approach food. It is not inherently harmful, but increased research is coming out to suggest that excessive screen use during eating is correlated with behaviours linked to disordered eating, including increased food intake, distracted eating, irregular meal patterns and eating disorder symptomatology. These findings do not mean that all of us have disordered eating from observing digital technology while eating; eating disorders and other mental health conditions in general are extremely complex and brought on from much more than looking at a screen.
The most encouraging discovery is that there are steps we can take today that will help us towards a better future. Practicing mindfulness and intuitive eating are not as monumental of a challenge as they may seem, and they help us realise that we may not have experienced being full present during a meal in quite a long time.
This article is not against technology. Technology has allowed us to become connected with people that our ancestors could only dream of. But we need to become more conscious of how we use our screens, especially during meals. Now more than ever, the fostering of healthy relationships between food and technology is needed.
Thank you for reading my article, I’m going to go for a walk outside.
