If You can't beat It-Use It: Why and how clinicians need to consider social media in the treatment of adolescents with obesity

Obesity is a prevalent, costly and severe health concern among adolescents. Although the incidence of overweight and obesity among children and adolescents in countries such as the United States, France and Sweden seems to have plateaued in recent years, rates remain high. It is important to focus on adolescents as the probabilities of an obese child to develop into an obese adult are much higher than for a healthy weight child. One potent environmental factor influencing the rise in obesity is the pervasive presence of food and beverage marketing to young people. Today, much of the food marketing relies on social media, and adolescents are heavy users of social media. In countries such as the USA and Sweden, more than 70% of adolescents at ages 13–17 use a social media site on a daily basis. Food marketing in social media works through a range of mechanisms, and the sight of food elicits a variety of brain responses related to preparation for food intake, desire to eat and cognitive processes such as hedonic evaluation. Food advertisements is powerful as brain reactivity to visual food cues has been shown to predict future weight gain in adolescents and to predict snack consumption.Snack and beverage companies are utilizing a wide range of sophisticated social media marketing techniques targeting adolescent consumers. Previous studies analyzing television advertisements seen by children showed that these promoted unhealthy foods, and the same seems to be true in social media.