Teenage girls are increasingly looking at fitness bloggers on Instagram and Facebook as role models but it is making them feel guilty that their bodies don't match up, new research shows.
Associate Professor Claire Drummond from Flinders University set out to study what motivates or discourages girls aged 13 to 17 to do physical activity.
But in her interviews with 75 teens she was surprised to find that most of them said their main role models were women who ran 'fitspo' or fitness inspiration pages.I thought they would say people like Sally Pearson or their parents, but for the majority it came out that it was these online fitness models on Instagram and Facebook,' she said,
'I asked them to explain what do you like about them and they said the fact they have magnificent, awesome bodies or great abs.'But they also said things like "Seeing how perfect they are made me feel really bad about my body".'
Professor Drummond said when she looked at the 'fitspo' pages mentioned by her interview subjects, the majority of the women running the sites had no background in fitness or nutrition.Others were models or personal trainers whose jobs allowed them plenty of time for exercise.
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