Children start to decide if someone is 'fat' or 'thin' from as young seven - and can be mistaken if they see too many of the same shape body, researchers have found. And the influence of social media also impacts children as they start to shape what will later become their adult perceptions - or misperceptions - on body sizes, health and wellbeing.

       Teams from Durham University, The University of Manchester and Northumbria University found the way our brains represent what constitutes "heavy" or "light" body shapes develops at a very young age. But the study, published in the Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, found that children will shift their views on what is deemed heavy or light if they see enough pictures of the same shape body.

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       It means if children from a young age see most people around them overweight, they may see that as the norm - impacting possibly harmful views on obesity when older.

       Professor Lynda Boothroyd, from Durham University’s Department of Psychology, carried out a first-of-its-kind study to examine the flexibility of body weight perceptions in children and young adults.

       She said: "Even very neutral images can adjust (children's) ideas about what is heavy or thin if they see enough of the same kind of body.

       "It has been clear for many years that we need to be wary about visual media which present only a narrow range of bodies, because this affects adults’ body perceptions.

       "Now we know that’s true for children, too. Even very neutral images can adjust their ideas about what is heavy or thin if they see enough of the same kind of body."

       The research, which involved more than 200 individuals aged seven through to adulthood, also indicated that media influences known to shape adult body perceptions can almost certainly impact children to the same degree, starting from early childhood and continuing to evolve into adulthood.

       C-author Dr Amelia Parchment from The University of Manchester said: "This was such an interesting study to work on and highlights that body-weight perceptions are shaped early on in life and continue into adulthood.

       "Our findings have important implications, including the potential impact of unrealistic body weights, typically seen in visual media, on the lifelong body weight perceptions of children as young as 7-years old."

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       Professor Boothroyd’s team at Durham has previously shown that adults’ ideas about what is an ‘attractive’ body weight or muscle mass are affected by visual experience.

       This includes the effect of television access on body perceptions among remote communities in Latin America and, in a separate study, finding that white Western women have lower body appreciation and experience greater pressure from the media to be thin compared to black Nigerian and Chinese women across all ages.

       Looking ahead, the team is now investigating how best to address body image concerns in young adults across the globe in a major ￡2 million research project and developing novel play-based techniques to investigate children’s understandings of body weight and body ideals from a younger age.

       Professor Boothroyd added: "Researchers often assume that children’s body perceptions and their ideas about body image work the same way as adults.

       "We’ve shown that that’s true, down to seven years, for basic perceptual impacts on body weight perception. But there’s more to explore in how that converts into their own body image and their own feelings about weight."