The Silent Epidemic We Can’t Ignore: GLP-1 Use Among Our Teens
Last week the Torah Umesorah Convention, I walked away deeply inspired by the educators, principals, and students who stopped to share their experiences with our My Best Self Project. I met girls who told me how much they loved and appreciated the program and how it helped them see themselves with a little more compassion. I met principals grateful to have this research-based, Torah-aligned curriculum addressing the mental health pressures their students face. Those conversations lit me up.
But one conversation left me shaken.
A seasoned Bais Yaakov principal quietly told me that the vast majority of her students are now on GLP-1 medications—not for medical necessity, but simply to stay thin. To stay at a size 0, she said. To keep up with expectations. To fit in. To escape the shame of not being “enough.”
And I have been hearing this more and more.
What was once whispered is now becoming frighteningly common. Girls as young as 14, sometimes younger, taking powerful metabolic medications because the pressure to be thin feels overwhelming. Because peers are using them. Because popularity and self-worth have become entangled with the size of their clothing.
This is not wellness. This is not health. This is not safety.
GLP-1 medications—originally designed for diabetes and then used in adults with obesity—are not benign. Their long-term effects on a developing adolescent body are still unknown. What is known raises red flags:
Potential disruptions to metabolic development
Increased risk of disordered eating behaviors
Nutrient deficiencies
Gastrointestinal distress and dehydration
Emotional dysregulation and heightened anxiety
And the very real possibility of future fertility complications
When a teen’s body is still forming, altering its hunger cues and metabolic pathways can have lifelong consequences. These medications cannot fix a culture of comparison. They cannot heal insecurity, loneliness, or perfectionism. They will not make our girls happier, more confident, or more at peace.
They may actually make those struggles worse.
We must understand what’s really driving this.
Girls aren’t taking these medications because they’re superficial. They’re taking them because they feel inadequate. Because they believe they have to earn belonging through thinness. Because silence around body image has allowed shame, pressure, and unrealistic expectations to grow unchecked.
GLP-1 use isn’t the root problem—it’s a symptom of a deeper wound.
And as I walk into schools and speak with mothers, teachers, and students across the country, I see it everywhere. Our girls are exhausted from trying to be perfect. They are measuring themselves against images and standards no one can realistically attain. They are internalizing messages that their bodies are projects to fix, not gifts to honor.
This is becoming an epidemic—and a dangerous one.
The overlap between GLP-1 misuse and eating disorders is emerging rapidly.
When you give a teen a medication that suppresses appetite, in a culture that already idolizes thinness, you’re not preventing disordered eating—you may be catalyzing it.
We are watching patterns now that we have spent decades trying to undo.
So where do we go from here?
We talk openly. We educate compassionately.
We stop praising extreme thinness as an ideal.
We build environments that center self-worth, not self-shrinkage.
We teach parents and educators how to spot the red flags.
We give girls the emotional tools to tolerate peer pressure, perfectionism, and insecurity.
We cultivate Torah-based values that celebrate dignity, inner strength, and a healthy relationship with one’s body.
Most importantly, we remind every girl:
You do not need to disappear to be worthy.
A Call to Our Community
What I heard at Torah Umesorah is a warning.
A painful one.
A wake-up call we cannot ignore.
We have the ability to intervene—not through fear, shame, or control, but through education, empathy, and prevention. We can create a culture where our daughters do not need medications to feel acceptable, where they learn to honor their bodies rather than fight them, and where belonging is based on character, not clothing size.
Our girls deserve better.
And together, we can give them better.
