{"id":368894,"date":"2025-08-24T04:19:26","date_gmt":"2025-08-24T04:19:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/368894\/"},"modified":"2025-08-24T04:19:26","modified_gmt":"2025-08-24T04:19:26","slug":"beauty-influencers-can-be-just-as-toxic-as-andrew-tate-psychiatrist-warns","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/368894\/","title":{"rendered":"Beauty influencers can be \u2018just as toxic\u2019 as Andrew Tate, psychiatrist warns"},"content":{"rendered":"

Beauty influencers can be \u201cjust as toxic as Andrew Tate\u201d, according to a consultant psychiatrist speaking at a Scottish Parliament event.<\/strong><\/p>\n

During a Festival of Politics event titled Smartphone Free Childhood?, Professor Mathew Sadlier, a consultant psychiatrist at Dublin\u2019s Mater Hospital, said he believes attitudes towards young people\u2019s smartphone use need \u201csocietal change\u201d.<\/p>\n

The event was chaired by Douglas Ross, the Conservative MSP for Highlands and Islands and convener of the Scottish Parliament\u2019s Education, Children and Young People Committee, and encouraged discussion on the impact of smartphones on children and young people.<\/p>\n

Prof Sadlier said he is seeing an increase in extreme eating disorders in young patients and he believes social media is partly to blame.<\/p>\n

He said: \u201cI would say it\u2019s not that it\u2019s creating new problems, but the people who have the problems who would\u2019ve fallen into that vulnerability group are becoming more extreme.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you look at whatever percentage of adolescent girls will have eating difficulties, there\u2019s similar problems with adolescent boys, but interestingly, it\u2019s got to do with bodybuilding, overeating, steroid use.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe videos around self-harm, there is an ecosystem about that that is very difficult to police.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said he believes certain influencers are as damaging as self-identified misogynist Andrew Tate, saying: \u201cYou go into that world with the beauty influencers: I think beauty influencers are just as toxic as Andrew Tate, they\u2019re just toxic to a different population.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe problem is one video on how to put on whatever piece of makeup is probably reasonable. But how many people watch one video?\u201d<\/p>\n

The Online Safety Act came into effect this year, providing a new set of laws that protect children and adults online.<\/p>\n

The Act has given providers new duties to implement systems and processes to reduce the risk that their services are used for illegal activity, and to take down illegal content when it does appear.<\/p>\n

Specific protections have been designed for children. Platforms are required to prevent children from accessing harmful and age-inappropriate content, and provide parents and children with clear and accessible ways to report problems online when they do arise.<\/p>\n

Discussing changes that could be made to curb the concerns of phone use among young people, Prof Sadlier said: \u201cAdolescence and childhood is a transitory phase, with respect to the young people in the audience, you won\u2019t be young for very long, so it\u2019s the next group of young people.<\/p>\n

\u201cJust because the current group of 12-year-olds have a mobile phone doesn\u2019t mean the next group of 12-year-olds have to have a mobile phone.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve been here before. We\u2019ve been here with cigarettes\u2026 I remember when seatbelts were introduced in cars and people thought \u2018this is going to be the worst thing, how can I drive with a\u00a0seatbelt, we\u2019re going to have crashes everywhere because I\u2019m being constrained\u2019.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt does take a societal change.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt takes changing the paradigm for parents to go, actually you know what, a child trying to learn off a YouTube video is a child in a digital institutionalised environment where they\u2019re learning to speak to YouTube, they\u2019re not learning how to speak to a person.\u201d<\/p>\n

Andrew Tate has been approached for comment.<\/p>\n

STV News is now on WhatsApp<\/p>\n

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\"WhatsApp<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Beauty influencers can be \u201cjust as toxic as Andrew Tate\u201d, according to a consultant psychiatrist speaking at a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":368895,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4317],"tags":[105,218,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-368894","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mental-health","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-mental-health","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115081823110478608","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/368894","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=368894"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/368894\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/368895"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=368894"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=368894"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=368894"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}