According to international study commissioned by Dove, by the age 12 most girls have seen around 77,500 ads.
Researchers questioned 2,000 girls from the UK and the US aged between 10 and 14 and found out that as much as 77 percent of them described themselves in negative terms. Many said they consider themselves ugly, fat and upset when comparing themselves with attractive images shown in advertisements.
The study found the link between the prevalence of beautiful images in media and increasing number of teenagers having low self-esteem. One 14-year-old girl wrote that images in magazines make her feel upset because she knows she could never be that beautiful.
Dr Susie Orbach, a psychotherapist and the author of Time to Talk says that the effect of media images can be crucial to vulnerable psychic of young girls who are "bombarded by millions of images of digitally manipulated, airbrushed beauty every day".
During a study girls were asked to keep a diary were they recorded all the beauty images seen over three days and write down their thoughts.
The low-self-esteem is closely connected to mental health problems. And the fact that almost 90 percent of all girls were feeling depressed about their appearance and 76 percent of them having eating disorders as a way to handle negative emotions towards themselves is alarming.
Tweet
