Platforms like Instagram and Facebook are now a part of the daily lives of many people. It is essential to ask whether social media use impacts body image, self-esteem, and self-concept in adolescents and young adults. Recent studies have shown mixed results. Researchers are now examining these questions empirically. This article reviews these findings, offering possible explanations of the effects of Social Media on Body Dissatisfaction. It focuses on Instagram, Facebook, and other popular image-based platform.
Essena O’Neill is a 19-year-old Australian Internet Star who quit Social Media back in November 2015 to prove that Social Media was just a way of faking self-promotion. Essena O’Neill was a star of Instagram, Tumblr, and YouTube, as well as other social networking platforms. She had over 600,000 Instagram followers (McCluskey 2016). Her fans and friends were in a frenzy as soon as she stopped posting. The Australian teenager was accused of closing her social networking accounts to gain more attention and fame. In response to Essena’s decision to quit social networking, her fans, friends and followers posted blogs and videos. Some even sent death threats.
Mahita Gajanan, a journalist for The Guardian, interviewed other young women the same week Essena left Instagram. She asked them about their sense of self-esteem as well as their experiences with Social Media. She found that most women interviewed were feeling insecure. Women reported being obsessed with the number of likes they received, worried about not looking good in photos, believed that people would perceive them differently on social networking compared to in real life, and wondered what aspects of their lives would be seen. Women spent a lot of time thinking about which image to upload, editing it, and checking their page regularly to see their updated “likes” count, causing them to feel insecure. Even though they were aware of their actions, many women were consumed by the need to be accepted on social networking. They struggled to change their habits. Many young women said that their lives were dominated by social networking, and they regarded the media as more important than life itself. The compulsive behavior that follows this preoccupation with Social Media may contribute to Body Dissatisfaction. The research results are mixed, and it is not clear what the exact relationship is between body dissatisfaction and social networking.
Media Influence
The use of social media has been increasing dramatically in the past decade. Pew Research Center reports that 71% of teens aged 13-17 use Facebook. 52% also use Instagram, and 41% Snapchat. In addition, teenage girls are more likely to use -image-based social media than their male counterparts. 61% of girls and 44% of boys use Instagram. This increase in social networking usage, particularly Facebook and Instagram, could negatively impact adolescent and young women’s self-confidence and satisfaction with their bodies (Lenhart 2015).
Researchers have shown links between Body Dissatisfaction, eating disorders, and women’s exposure to television or fashion magazines (Grabe et al., 2008; Levine &Murnen, 2009). These studies looked at Body Image and showed that there could be a connection between seeing images of a thin body and Body Dissatisfaction. Becker and coworkers (2011) found that media effects could be indirect. The authors investigated whether exposure to mass media, such as television, video, CD players and MP3 players, Internet access, and mobile phone access, was associated with eating disorders in Fijian teenage girls. The authors found that both direct mass exposure (i.e., personal media exposure) and indirect mass exposure (i.e., media exposure from people in the peer group) were associated with eating disorders in Fijian adolescents. The study, despite its limitations (such as whether or not the findings could be generalized) (Becker et al., 2011), suggests that, at least in this instance, social networks played an integral role in the relationship between eating pathology and media, which may extend into a relationship between body unsatisfaction.
These findings should be viewed with the knowledge that other researchers have not found a link between viewing image based media and dissatisfaction. Holmstrom (2004) performed a Meta-analysis of the existing literature, focusing on media exposure in general and Body Dissatisfaction, Body Image, and Eating Disorder Pathology. Holmstrom (2004) focused on 34 studies using media as the independent variables and a form of dissatisfaction as the dependent variables. The overall effect size for these studies was small. The research revealed that women felt better about themselves after viewing images of overweight bodies but had no change in Body Image when viewing thin bodies. These findings suggest that there is a relationship between media and body image. Further research should be done.
Ferguson (2013) conducted a more recent meta-analysis that incorporated the findings of 204 studies. Holmstrom (2004) and Grabe and coworkers (2008) were also included in this meta-analysis. Ferguson focused on publication biased, more specifically, that statistically significant findings are more likely to be published while null results are not. Meta-analyses are a collection of biased findings. Ferguson (2013) found that there was little or no correlation between media and Body Dissatisfaction among males. However, the prevalence of Body Image problems in women, particularly those who were predisposed to , was higher but still very low. The meta-analysis, in general, encouraged researchers to be conservative when claiming a link between Social media and Body Dissatisfaction due to the inflated effect size, study design limitations, and publishing bias.
Social Media Usage
Social Media is a collaborative platform for social interaction among seemingly infinitive numbers of people. has identified several benefits of social networking. The six main benefits identified were (1) increased interaction with others, 2) more readily available, shared and tailored health information, (3) greater accessibility and wider access to health data, (4) social and emotional support from peers, (5) potential to influence policy (Moorhead, 2013). social networks and image-based social networks have many benefits, but some of their uses can lead to unwanted effects. This review focuses on three of the most popular image-based social networking platforms: Pinterest, Instagram, and Facebook.
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