The cdc [1] has some figures that show a remarkably clear trend upward after ~2007. But IIRC it's pretty even across gender.

[1] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db352-h.pdf

thanks for picking up my slack. Another CDC study/poll is shows even worse data than I imagined[1]: e.g. ~8% of high schoolers try to kill themselves every year (I know, sounds unbelievable. Please, everyone, check yourself and correct me if possible). The numbers for girls are higher than for boys but the rises over the years (and the influence through instagram) not necessarily, see the diagrams.

[1]https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/su/su6901a6.htm?s_cid=su...

There's rising competitiveness for everything else, not just body issues.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/12/the-sil...

This was interesting:

> students who reported having sex with persons of the same sex or with both sexes (30.3%); and students who identified as lesbian, gay, or bisexual (23.4%)

Assuming that most people who have sex with others of the same sex do so because they are gay (rather than e.g. because they are experimenting), this indicates that people who are in denial about being gay are more prone to suicide.

Facebook might be asking girls where their body image issues came from, but boys/men are not much different.

It's reasonable that if one gender is developing self esteem issue from a social network, then the other gender _probably_ is too.

I wonder, though, if body image issues tend to manifest differently in boys and girls. I suspect that we're somewhat better at spotting girls' issues than we are at boys'.

No one cares about the boy issues and while maturing they find out about it very quick.

So, around the same time as the Great Recession?

If we're going to correlate, we can do it with with obesity as well.

In 2018 "obesity prevalence was [...] 21.2% among 12- to 19-year-olds." [0] according to the CDC. That's one out of 5 being obese, not overweight. And it has more than tripled since the 70's [1].

And then we start blaming the "evil screens" for people not finding themselves attractive.

[0] https://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/childhood.html

[1] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hestat/obesity_child_15_16/obe...

Correlation isn't causation, society is shifting massively, regardless of Facebook and Instagram.