The following is excerpted from an online article posted by MedicalXpress.
University of the Sunshine Coast researchers have shown, for the first time in Australia, what happens in the brain of adolescent girls when they see someone being subjected to body image-related cyberbullying (BRC).
The study, published in NeuroImage, used functional MRI to measure which parts of the brain were activated in girls aged 14–18 when they read social media comments attacking people’s body weight, shape, or size.
Lead author Taliah Prince, a Ph.D. candidate at UniSC’s Thompson Institute, said the findings shed new light on the emotional and cognitive impacts of cyberbullying.
“We saw significantly increased responses in areas of the brain tied to emotional regulation, visual processing, and social cognition,” Prince said. “We also saw that among those who had recently experienced cyberbullying, viewing BRC content triggered responses in areas related to memory and visual attention, suggesting they could have been reliving their own bullying experiences.
“Interestingly, girls who didn’t report suffering body dissatisfaction showed greater activation in brain areas that regulate reward and emotion. This may act as a protective mechanism against the negative impacts of cyberbullying.”
In the study, 61% of girls reported a recent experience with cyberbullying, while more than 90% said they had encountered it in the past. More than 30% also reported dissatisfaction with their body.
Source: MedicalXpress
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2025-07-body-image-bullying-affects-teenage.html
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