Young Australians are struggling with stress and school related challenges, but body image is by far their biggest concern.
The survey found stress levels had spiked this year. When asked to rank their personal concerns from a list of 15 issues, 27.3 per cent nominated “coping with stress”, putting it in the top three, compared with 18.7 per cent last year.
Anne Hampshire, from Mission Australia, said that body image issues created stress for both genders.
“What came through in the responses was that young people are worried both about their personal body image and about how the media continues to promote a level of physical perfection that is neither healthy nor achievable,” Ms Hampshire said.
Carmen Acosta, also from Mission Australia, says the results show there needs to be more emphasis on education and programs to tackle poor body image.
“The work needs to continue past adolescence and the information and the support to young people should be also included or extended to post-school environments such as tertiary institutions,” she said.
From my experience in the classroom, body image is a huge area of concern among upper-primary school aged kids as well. The issue is a strong area of interest of mine, and an inspiration for my unpublished novel (which deals extensively with body image).
It is essential that we improve the way we deal with this very real concern.
Tags: beauty, Education, Fitness, food, Health, life, magazines, media, School, television, tv
Topical Teaching 
November 18, 2010 at 9:14 am |
I agree with you that body image is a very real concern. I am glad that it is starting to get some notice! Hopefully steps will be taken to help reduce negative body image in kids.
November 18, 2010 at 10:55 am |
Thank you both for the comment and for dealing with the issue so comprehensively in your great blog!
November 25, 2010 at 8:11 am |
Nice post and I agree with you too. Non-academic activities will actually help teenagers to deal with peer pressure on body image. When I was still in high school, we had one class per week of hobbies. We were asked what kind of things we would like to do during at that time; visual arts, performing arts, sports, etc. I took performing arts. Each week my classes changes between 3 different types of performing arts; drama, singing and jamming session. It was nice as I was able to learn a couple of things which eventually helped me to some of my achievements that I went through. Through all of these classes, I was able to perform musicals, operas and concerts which was overwhelming.
All schools should do the same. It’s really helpful. I enjoyed my high school a lot due to all of the fun things that I was able to do while studying academically.