What is ‘bigorexia’?

Many young men are overexercising and following rigid diets, and say they feel isolated

of course, is quite understandable,” said Thomas Gültzow, a public health researcher at Maastricht University in the Netherlands. “Almost none of what is out there focuses on men.”

In 2020, Gültzow and his co-authors published a study that analyzed

1,000 Instagram posts that depicted male bodies. Idealized images of “highly muscular, lean men,” the report found, received more likes and shares than content showing men who are less muscular or have more body fat.

Some Hollywood hunks have started reassessment, though. Last month, Channing Tatum pushed back against a shirtless image of himself from “Magic Mike XXL” that was flashed in front of the audience of Kelly Clarkson’s daytime talk show.

“It’s hard to look like that. Even if you do work out, to be that kind of in shape is not natural,” Tatum said. “That’s not even healthy. You have to starve yourself. I don’t think when you’re that lean, it’s actually healthy.”

Even if there is a long history of celebrating muscled physiques, no form of media has disrupted how young men view their bodies quite like the insatiable voyeurism and staged exhibitionism that fuels platforms like TikTok and Instagram.

“Social media is really where young men experience evaluations of their appearance from others,” said Veya Seekis, a lecturer at the School of Applied Psychology at Griffith University in Queensland, Australia.

“The more men view their bodies as objects for public display, the more they fear being negatively evaluated, which so often triggers compulsive exercising and other ‘healthy’ behaviors that can end up having an impact on their well-being,” he said.

For three years, Seekis has been collecting data on the social media habits of 303 undergraduate men and 198 high school boys in Australia. She has found, in part, that exposure to images of archetypal masculine physiques was linked to low body esteem in young men and an increased desire to become more muscular.

It’s a fitness feedback loop that has ensnared Johnny Edwin, 22, a linebacker-size scaffolder from British Columbia, Canada. He said that when he was in high school, he would spend hours glued to YouTube channels like that of Chris Jones, a self-described exercise guru known as Beastmode Jones.

“Social media, and the pressure to live up to those guys and have that manly looking physique, has completely taken over my life,” said Edwin, who still watches weightlifting videos on YouTube.