Introduction

Hello everyone! 

My name is Carly, and as a senior at BASIS Scottsdale, I get to spend the last trimester of school doing a Senior Research Project (SRP). During this time, my peers and I can explore our interests to answer a research question of our choosing. No more classes? I can watch Netflix all day then, right? Actually, as part of our SRPs, we must have an internship, where we can further our knowledge on our topics and work to answer our research questions. Starting in early February, I will be an intern at A New Beginning, the excellent outpatient treatment center for eating disorders.

So I suppose I won't be wearing sweatpants while re-watching full seasons of old shows all day, but the internship will be a far more valuable experience. As a teenage girl growing up in America, I have been unable to escape the use of social media. When Instagram first gained popularity, I thought, "This is pointless. I'm never going to get an Instagram." Later, I realized Instagram contained more than a ton of ego-centric "selfies," so I decided to create an account for "following" others, but not for posting my own pictures. While I do frequently see Arizona sunset pictures on Instagram (Arizona really does have the prettiest sunsets) and a gamut of other random things, I still see a ton of "selfies," or pictures of people taken by someone else (which no longer makes them "selfies," technically, to anyone reading this who is not super Instagram-involved). While these pictures of people may seem harmless, maybe they are not. Perhaps constantly seeing pictures of other people in bikinis with their "perfect bodies" during the summer makes other people feel badly about their own bodies, for example.

I hope to analyze the impact of social media on eating disorders, focusing primarily on anorexia for my research question. I will be spending the next 3 months developing an answer to this question. I will post weekly on this blog about what I find regarding my research question, and what I learn during my time at A New Beginning.

Thanks for checking out my blog!

Until next time,
Carly Sykes