Emotional eating is a coping mechanism when dealing with emotions associated with body appearance (Ding and Xu, 2021). A study done by Ding and Xu found that emotional eating is driven by anxiety from appearance-based comparisons on social media. It was also found that this result was stronger amongst adolescents (Ding and Xu, 2021). Ding and Xu also compared females and males in their study and found that females were more affected by this anxiety and social comparison than males.

NEDA is a great resource to learn more about or even get help for all types of eating disorders. 

Midgley et al. completed four separate studies that all had concluding results that social media is associated with extreme comparisons which turn into low self-esteem and life satisfaction. Social comparisons were found to be frequent and negative in all studies (Midgley et al., 2020). The more someone negatively compared themselves, the more negative thoughts they had about themself, which affected their self-esteem, mood, and life satisfaction (Midgley et al., 2020). This study by Midgley et al. also found that social media users were more likely to compare themselves to superior over inferior. Time was also taken into account during study 4 as it did show significant dissatisfaction the more the individual used social media (Midgley et al., 2020).