By Bella Craig of RNZ
Fuelled by fitness and gym content online, some young men say they are turning to risky and illegal measures to change their appearance.
RNZ’s Checkpoint spoke to men in their 20s who say the pressure to look a certain way led to them using performance- and image-enhancing drugs.
They said conversations about using steroids and other banned substances were becoming more open in gyms and among younger people, with even high school students talking about using.
It follows a report from Netsafe and Te Mana Whakaatu, the Classification Office, detailing how young people are feeling increasingly bad about themselves – because they are not measuring up to body appearance standards they see online.
The report, Digital Reflections, interviewed 58 young people aged 14 to 17 across Aotearoa who said social media affected their wellbeing and self-perception.
Tom* was 20 when he first started taking Sarms (selective androgen receptor modulators) and he saw results pretty quickly.
Sarms are part of a group of performance- and image-enhancing drugs.
The group also includes anabolic steroids, anti-estrogens and peptides – all of which are banned in sport and illegal to use recreationally in New Zealand.
But Tom said despite this, getting his hands on the drugs was pretty easy through one of his mates.
“Usually when you’ve been working out for a long time, it takes a long time to hit a new PR [personal record] because you need a lot of recovery when you do it.
“But I found that I was hitting a PR almost every single week,” he said.
It is claimed Sarms build muscle mass and bone density without the side effects of steroids.
But they have not been fully studied.
Nor have they been approved for use in humans or been through clinical trials, and they are often marketed online as research chemicals.
The Sarms cost Tom $120 a bottle and he used two bottles over a 12-week period.
However, although he experienced no physical side effects from the experimental drugs while completing the course, he said, it did affect his mood and temper.
“My mental health kind of fluctuated, I became a lot more touchy and a lot more quick to anger and I got irritated a lot more easily.”
After doing some research on the side effects of using Sarms, he stopped taking them.
The known side effects of Sarms can be life-threatening, from an increased risk of heart attacks and strokes to liver damage and the limiting of testosterone production.
Tom said he would have considered taking them again if there were no risks to his health.
“From the research that I did I was pretty off put from taking it again, just knowing the effect that it has on your fertility and also just overall mental health,” he said.
“Also just the physical danger and just the addiction of wanting to use it consistently and then wanting to consistently up the dosage of it.”
But Tom said he was first drawn to the drug because of what he was seeing on social media.
He said among certain online communities, there was pressure to look very muscular, but he said that was hard to attain quickly without getting a boost from performance- and image-enhancing substances.
“The idea that you need steroids to reach the fitness goal or the physique that they want and obviously with social media, it kind of makes it seem like it’s the standard to look extremely big and lean at the same time when it’s really not that healthy to do and it’s not very easy to do without steroids,” he said.
“It’s kind of become a bit of a culture to take it.”
A Netsafe Body Image report that came out in July reflected a lot of what Tom experienced.
It said influencers who create fitness content, about strict dieting and intense workout plans, could be seen as motivational for some but unhelpful and unrealistic for others.
The report said young men often engage with fitness-related content and feel pressure to measure up, but they talk less about the negative side effects.
Although he sees misleading content, Tom said he was beginning to see more research-backed content too.
“Nowadays, there’s been a bit of a switch in the content that I see where it’s a lot more about just loving yourself and loving your body instead of trying to achieve a physique that other people think is desirable,” he said.
A man from Wellington, who did not want to be named, said content from social media influencers claiming they do not take performance-enhancing drugs, but are very muscular, leave him questioning how they got there.
He said algorithms fill his social media feed with this content daily.
“There’s a few guys that you kind of just look at and you go, wow, I wanna look like that,” he said.
“You put in the work, put in the time, but it never quite matches up and you’re just kind of wondering, what am I missing?”
At his local gym, he has noticed more young people, even school students, openly talking about using performance- and image-enhancing drugs.
“Just at the gym that I go to, I hear high schoolers who all come in wearing their school uniforms and while they’re crowded around the bench press or whatever they’re doing, they’ll be talking about, ‘Oh, I might take steroids next year’,” he said.
Emeritus professor in sports medicine Dr David Gerrard from the University of Otago said social media reinforces pressure to conform to a certain body image for young people.
He said personal trainers and fitness influencers were responsible for giving out accurate advice.
“The people who portray themselves as personal trainers should be knowledgeable in these things and should be able to counter the questions young men might ask of them as body image, body shape and an achievable image,” he said.
“Also how they might benefit from nutritional advice and strength and conditioning, and not need to go anywhere near extreme forms of supplementation or in extreme cases, anabolic steroids.”
The Sports Integrity Commission said importing or possessing banned substances can and does lead to anti-doping sanctions for athletes at all levels – even if those substances are used for image-enhancing reasons and not to cheat at sport.
*Name was changed to protect the person’s identity.