Influence of Social Media on Dietary Habits and Nutritional Choices in Adolescents: A Systematic Review of the Evidence

Background: The objective of this review is to analyze the current evidence concerning how social media influences adolescents’ dietary habits and nutritional choices. Methods: Search databases included PubMed, Google Scholar, and Scopus. The included articles were published between 2014 - 2024 and explored the role of social media on dietary choices, food and beverage marketing knowledge, food consumption patterns, and nutritional knowledge in adolescents aged 10-19 years. Results: Social media can promote both healthy nutritional behaviors and unhealthy nutritional behaviors, and current evidence reveals that the promotion of unhealthy dietary behaviors (including consumption of fast food and sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs)) is the most common result in adolescents. The effectiveness of social media in conveying nutritional interventions to adolescents is limited, as some studies have shown improvement in nutrition knowledge or behaviors, while others have observed no significant impact. Social media usage is also associated with disordered eating in adolescents, including restrictive eating, binge eating, and orthorexia nervosa related to body image dissatisfaction. The potential influence of social media on adolescent dietary behaviors is a public health concern as it may decrease the overall diet quality of adolescents and increase the risk of malnutrition and chronic diseases later in life. Conclusions: Future research can focus on evaluating the overall diet quality of adolescents through using the Healthy Eating Index (HEI), as well as assessing whether the observed impacts of social media on dietary behaviors is caused by social media or adolescents’ desire to see particular food content based on previous dietary behaviors.