TV Adds to Teen Girls' Eating Disorders: Study
They had to go all the way to Fiji to do it, but researchers say they have strong evidence to add to the argument that television plays a role in teenage girls' eating disorders.
In the study, published in this month's British Journal of Psychiatry, researchers interviewed two sets of Fijian schoolgirls before television was introduced to their town in 1995 and then again in 1998, reports the BBC.
The researchers found that before the availability of television, the number of girls who used self-induced vomiting to control their weight was zero. But after three years of television, the number was up to 11 percent.
Girls living in houses with a television were three times more likely to show symptoms of eating disorders, the study showed.
And by the end of the study, 69 percent of those studied said they had gone on diets to lose weight, and 74 percent said they thought they were "too big or fat."