According to experts, female athletes who believe they must achieve the "ideal" figure may develop eating problems as a result of social media. Dr. Kathryn Vidlock and Dr. Catherine Liggett, both collegiate athletes, and a dietician Dr. Andrew Dole warned that dietary fallacies disseminated by fitness influencers, exercise-related fitspiration images on Instagram, and photoshopping are having a direct impact on athletes.

Their book titled "Spring Forward: Balanced Eating, Exercise, and Body Image in Sport for Female Athletes" underlines how disordered eating and bad body image are now ubiquitous in almost all sports, particularly in high school. The authors believed that athletes continuously attempt to fit into a body-type ideal that isnt realistic, and education is the way to stop this in its tracks.

Top female competitors, including tennis champion Serena Williams, have spoken out about the significant pressure to maintain the perfect physique. Spring Forward, published by CRC Press, has experiences from almost a dozen female athletes on how the push to be thin caused their battles with poor body image.

The women included in the book, ranging from swimmers to tennis players, recount horrifying tales such as jogging 5 miles as self-punishment for eating a cookie, collapsing in the gym after going 24 hours without food, and dieting drastically in response to criticism over her "butt cheeks."

Dr. Kathryn Vidlock and her co-authors emphasized that the problem is exacerbated by the fact that many sports have body-type expectations. The book, Spring Forward, promotes higher-quality performance in womens sports via healthy diet and nutrition, from secondary school to top athlete levels, to counteract excessive expectations. The book aims to educate teenage and female athletes, sports coaches, and clubs about body confidence.

Additionally, the authors of the book have also created an education program called SPRING (Strength and Positivity Rooted in Nutrition for Girls) for high schools. In the book, they also noted that including SPRING in sports has resulted in an increase of more than 22% in body image flexibility among cheerleaders in Colorado schools. 

(Source: https://theprint.in/health/social-media-may-cause-eating-disorders-in-female-athletes-says-research/1548117/ )