Cited by 380Eating Disorders and BehaviorsNutrition, Health and Food BehaviorBody Image and Dysmorphia Studies

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 37 of the 37 references it cites were found in a registry or an index; none of the 12 sources its claims cite is checked for support yet.

Instagram use is linked to increased symptoms of orthorexia nervosa.

Open access
Turner, Pixie G., Lefevre, Carmen E.·2017·Eating and Weight Disorders - Studies on Anorexia, Bulimia and Obesity

Abstract

PURPOSE: Social media use is ever increasing amongst young adults and has previously been shown to have negative effects on body image, depression, social comparison, and disordered eating. One eating disorder of interest in this context is orthorexia nervosa, an obsession with eating healthily. High orthorexia nervosa prevalence has been found in populations who take an active interest in their health and body and is frequently comorbid with anorexia nervosa. Here, we investigate links between social media use, in particularly Instagram and orthorexia nervosa symptoms. METHODS: We conducted an online survey of social media users (N = 680) following health food accounts. We assessed their social media use, eating behaviours, and orthorexia nervosa symptoms using the ORTO-15 inventory. RESULTS: Higher Instagram use was associated with a greater tendency towards orthorexia nervosa, with no other social media channel having this effect. In exploratory analyses Twitter showed a small positive association with orthorexia symptoms. BMI and age had no association with orthorexia nervosa. The prevalence of orthorexia nervosa among the study population was 49%, which is significantly higher than the general population (<1%). CONCLUSIONS: Our results suggest that the healthy eating community on Instagram has a high prevalence of orthorexia symptoms, with higher Instagram use being linked to increased symptoms. These findings highlight the implications social media can have on psychological wellbeing, and the influence social media 'celebrities' may have over hundreds of thousands of individuals. These results may also have clinical implications for eating disorder development and recovery.

Overview

AI snapshot

Written from the paper’s full text.

TL;DR

In an online survey of 680 female social media users, higher Instagram use was associated with greater orthorexia nervosa symptoms as measured by ORTO-15. The sample showed a high prevalence of ON symptoms (49% using the <35 cut-off) compared with <1% in the general population.

Key findings

  • Instagram use was negatively correlated with ORTO-15 score (r = −0.10, p = 0.01), meaning higher Instagram use was linked to greater ON symptoms; in regression, Instagram use (β = −0.12, p = 0.003) and country of residence (β = 0.23, p < 0.001) were significant predictors.
  • ON prevalence in the sample was 49.0% with the <35 cut-off and 90.6% with the <40 cut-off; among Instagram users it was 49.3% and 90.4%, respectively, versus <1% in the general population.
  • No significant relationships were found between ORTO-15 and number of food types eaten (r = −0.01, p = 0.87), number of social media channels used (r < 0.01, p = 0.99), age (r = −0.06, p = 0.13), or BMI (r = −0.03, p = 0.47); diet types also did not differ [F(5,674) = 0.705, p = 0.620].
  • Twitter showed a small positive correlation with ORTO-15 score (r = 0.12, p = 0.04) in exploratory analysis; the paper describes this inconsistently as a positive association with ON symptoms in the abstract and as possibly protective in the discussion.

Methods

  • Online Qualtrics survey; participants were recruited via unpaid advertisements on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter, plus the “Plantbased Pixie” blog and “Health Bloggers Community” newsletter. Data were collected from 713 participants (23 males, 686 females, 4 other/prefer not to say; mean age 24.96 ± 8.17 years); final analysis included 680 females after excluding non-female participants and missing ORTO-15 data.
  • Measures included social media channels and time spent, dietary choices (19 food types and diet label), ORTO-15, and demographics. ORTO-15 lower scores indicate higher ON symptoms; cut-offs of <40 and <35 were used.
  • Analyses used Spearman correlations for social media use and ORTO-15, Pearson correlations for age/BMI, one-way ANOVA for diet types, and linear regression with Instagram use, age, BMI, ethnicity, and country of residence.

Limitations

  • The paper states convenience non-random sampling, with 83% of participants recruited from the author’s Instagram account; the study title (“Health habits on social media”) may have attracted health-interested individuals; BMI was self-reported; medical diets were not assessed; and causality cannot be established due to the correlational design.
  • The paper also notes possible interactions among multiple social media channels and that the sample was restricted to females because the number of male participants was too low for adequate power.
  • The introduction notes ORTO-15 psychometric limitations, including internal consistency issues, lack of standardisation, cultural variation, and possible false positives from the high cut-off score.

Model-written summary. Check it against the paper before relying on it.

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1007/s40519-017-0364-2

Cites

37 of 37 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Figures

Fig. 1 The negative relationship between time spent on Instagram and ORTO-15 score
Fig. 1 The negative relationship between time spent on Instagram and ORTO-15 scoreCC BY · PubMed Central

Verification

Claims the paper makes

12 Own result · 9 Not checked yet · 9 Own method · 5 Own interpretation · 1 No basis given

Verify all 12 references — free account

Show all 16 claims

  • It may state two separate claims as one. 6
  • Probably not a substantial claim. 15
  • The quote only partly states this claim. 1
20 of 20

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

Statistics recomputed

Every reported test result, recomputed from its test statistic and degrees of freedom. A result shows as not adding up only once an independent check has confirmed it.

  • ConsistentF(5, 674) = 0.705reported p = .62 · recomputed p = .620

    “F(5,674) = 0.705, p = .620”

  • ConsistentF(5, 648) = 9.58reported p < .001 · recomputed p < .001

    “F(5,648) = 9.58, p < .001”

2 of 2

Self-check

Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.

Each contradiction between two passages listed here was confirmed by an independent check.

2 of 2

Citations

Cites

Show all 37 references

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Items 301–379 of 379

Metadata

Authors
Turner, P. G., & Lefevre, C. E.
Affiliations
University College London (GB)
Corresponding author
Lefevre, Carmen E.
Venue
Eating and Weight Disorders - Studies on Anorexia, Bulimia and Obesity
Published
2017-03-01
Volume
22
Issue
2
Pages
277-284
ISSN
  • 1124-4909 (ISSN-L)
  • 1590-1262
OpenAlex
W2593519256
Cited by
380
References
37
Citations by year
2026: 39 · 2025: 43 · 2024: 40 · 2023: 52 · 2022: 55 · 2021: 60 · 2020: 43 · 2019: 28 · 2018: 18 · 2017: 1
FWCI
30.45
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Locations
  • Eating and Weight Disorders - Studies on Anorexia Bulimia and Obesity (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • UCL Discovery (University College London) (submittedVersion)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Eating Disorders and Behaviors
  • Health Sciences › Nursing › Nutrition and Dietetics › Nutrition, Health and Food Behavior
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Body Image and Dysmorphia Studies
Keywords
orthorexia nervosa, Instagram, social media use, eating disorders, disordered eating, young adults, ORTO-15, Twitter, body image, social media influencers
MeSH terms
Adolescent, Adult, Feeding and Eating Disorders, Body Image, Feeding Behavior, Female, Humans, Health Behavior, Young Adult, Social Media, Symptom Assessment

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

A language model drew the claims from the paper on 2026-10-08, under version 3 of the claim definition (model deepseek-v4.1-flash, prompt extract-v3).

A second model labelled each claim on 2026-10-08 (model jev-1.13-20260917, definition revision gold-guideline-v0.2).

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review