An investigation of how social media can influence teenagers’ body

image and shape anxiety

Word counts: 4735

Table of Contents
Introduction ..................................................................................................................2
Literature Review ........................................................................................................ 3
Comparisons with Ideal Images ................................................................................. 4
Peers Influence ............................................................................................................. 5
Specific concerns .......................................................................................................... 6
Possible Outcomes ........................................................................................................6
Methodology ................................................................................................................. 7
Questionnaire and Interview ...................................................................................... 7
Secondary Research .....................................................................................................8
Statistical Analysis ....................................................................................................... 9
Ethical Considerations ................................................................................................ 9
Results ........................................................................................................................... 9
Results of Correlation Tests ........................................................................................9
Results of interviews .................................................................................................. 12
Results of Questionnaire ........................................................................................... 15
Discussion ................................................................................................................... 17
Evaluation ...................................................................................................................18
Conclusion .................................................................................................................. 19
Reference List .............................................................................................................20
Introduction

In relation to the booming spread of technological items at the start of this century,
internet usage has increased at a significant speed, especially among the adolescent
population. Data shows that in China alone the population of teenaged internet users
exceeds 183 million, and over 94.9% of teenagers hold access to the internet with
digital items such as mobile phones and computers. This percentage is significantly
higher than the overall internet access rate of the whole population of 70.4% (Wang,
2021). Accompanied by their increasing usage, the teenage population is starting to
show a profound interest in social media. The We Are Social digital 2022 report
highlights that the world now has 58.4% of its population being active users of social
media. At every second colorful images and videos consisting of snap-shots, personal
vlogs and various other types of information are being uploaded onto sites like
Ticktock and Facebook for millions to view. Over 10 million new photographs are
uploaded every hour to the social media site of Facebook alone. (Mayer-Schonberger
& Cukier, 2013).

With this rapid spread of information, statements of value judgment and personal
opinions are reaching adolescents with more convenience than ever before. All this
arouses the concern that the general level of body shape and body image anxiety felt
by teenagers may increase, accompanied by adverse effects like disordered eating
habits and increased stress levels. Leading to further mental health concerns.

Previous research demonstrates that there may be a positive relationship between

social media usage and dissatisfaction of teen body images. Body image
dissatisfaction occurs fundamentally from comparisons between an individual’s own
body images and images of more ideal bodies. The manifold self-snaps offer pictures
of ideal bodies more chances to be exposed, with social media sites serving as their
platforms. What is more is the existence of editing tools offers the possibility of
producing supremely ideal images which are impossible to achieve in real life,
making matters worse. Peer pressure is another aspect of the issue. The power of
words and opinions of other young people can easily be intensified and passed around
under the comments and numerous available chat groups so commonly seen in daily
life.

The remaining questions are to what extent does social medias in theory influence
teenagers ’level of body image anxiety? Which specific type of social media of aspect
of it arouses the most significant level of stress, and what forms does these stress
usually take? Is the rising level of body shape anxiety directly related to social media
usage or is it merely a result of the increasing number of hours spent online? Are age,
gender or any other personal aspects elements to this influence and to what extent are
adolescents’ behaviors towards dieting or body management programs linked to these
invoked stress? This paper aims to examine these questions with a questionnaire,
answers received from interviews with three adolescents and other second-hand
research consisting of previous theories and data.

Literature Review

Former researchers have already documented the fact that social media sites act as a
potential source for body image pressure, suggesting that teenagers who are heavy or
frequent users of social media usually suffer from higher levels of body image
concerns (Tiggemann& Millers, 2010). A significant amount of research has
demonstrated that exposure to websites containing information related to eating and
body image are associated with body dissatisfaction and dieting (Rodger et al 2015)
and that there may exists a relationship between internet usage, body image concerns
and to some extent disordered eating habits (Tiggemann& Slaters 2013). However, up
to now there is still a lacks in research that investigates specifically on the relationship
between body image concerns and social media usage of the adolescent population,
further more how differences in content affect those relations.
Comparisons with Ideal Images

In theory, body dissatisfaction develops fundamentally when people, especially

women repeatedly compare their own images to those of others (Thompson et al.,
1999). With the numerous portraits and images people present on social media sites,
social media sites can provide grounds for such comparisons and in terms of increased
body image anxiety of adolescents.

An investigation associated the time teenage girls spent on social media sites
(Facebook) with a more significant level of body image concerns. The participants
who were female high school students aged between 13 and 15 filled out
questionnaires with questions about their social media access and level of body shape
concerns. As a result, participants who were Facebook users scored significantly
higher than non-users on all measures of body image concerns and it was concluded
that the internet (including social media sites) served as a potent socio-cultural
medium in relevance to the body image of adolescent girls. This study was not alone
in fact, another study made in 2014 focused specifically on the effect of Facebook
usage on the mood and body image dissatisfaction of females (n=112) (Fardouly,
Diedrichs, Vartanian, Halliwell, 2014). In this study parts of the participants (n=38)
were required to view their social media accounts for 10 minutes, and complete both
pre and post-exposure state measures of negative emotions and body dissatisfaction
level. Results showed that specifically after being exposed to Facebook, Participants
showed a higher level of negative emotions compared to all the other different
contents other participants were exposed to. However, in contrary to the hypothesis
that Facebook usage will lead to further body dissatisfaction, there was no evidence
found that viewing Facebook affected participants’ post body dissatisfaction rating.

The conclusions of both articles provide thoughts for the theory of the effect of social
media usage on teenagers’ body image anxiety. However, the participants of both of
these studies selected were slightly unfit to conclude this study: all of the chosen
participants were female, thus ignoring the other sex which may give answers to
questionnaire questions that are completely different from those given by their female
peers. Thus the results and trends found in these two previous studies can’t refer to the
whole adolescent population. Moreover, both of these studies investigated only the
social media site-Facebook, which is only one site in the numerous social media sites
in this age. Finally, there was no constraint in the specific element or content
participants viewed during the investigation. Therefore, it is impossible to investigate
which specific elements provoked those negative emotions discovered in the studies.

Peers Influence

Another aspect in which social media can bring forth body image anxiety in young
students is how it carries and spreads information, especially among peers in nearb
age groups. Previous studies have brought forth the statement that anxiety about a
person’s own appearance is more likely to occur in the comparison theory (Xu &
Wang, 2022). The sociocultural theory has posited that social agents such as the media,
peers and parents convey intense messages that regard the importance of appearance
and further the pressure to bring oneself closer to the ideal, unrealistic bodies
(Thompson et al. 1999; Brown and Bobkowski, 2011; Webb and Zimmer-Gembeck,
2014). Peer feedback also serves as an important source of adolescents’
self-evaluation. Those who received poor feedback from friends and other people of
their own ages may possibly be under more pressure, and thus are experiencing higher
levels of body dissatisfaction. Conversations about body weight, body shape, and
outer appearance aspects, joke like complaints of an individual’s appearance
sometimes known as fat talks are related to body image and dieting concerns (Sharpe
et al., 2013) The social media sites which acts naturally as a major platform for peers
to interact generally provides grounds for all of these interactions above, and thus peer
interaction on social media sites is also linked to body concerns of teen students.
Furthermore, the comment area is also significant to the increase of levels of anxiety:
Traditionally teasing particularly has an association with body image stress (Lampard
et al., 2014), while opinions expressed by the comments under pictures or texts can
also impact people’s image concerns.

Specific concerns

Recent research in Shanghai has investigated the differences in content to the anxiety
brought forth. (Xu & Wang, 2022) Data collected from university students
demonstrated the fact that according to self-evaluation, the most conman anxiety
brought forth is body shape. Among the tags available on the social media platform
(Xiaohongshu) beauty and skincare tags are the tags most inclined by participants to
look at, with 27.63% of the total number. In the comparisons around half of the
participants agreed that the influence of text is weaker than that of images posted on
social media. Interestingly in total 44.74% of the participants believed that social
media sites can cause themselves body image anxiety. Remarkably, only 10.53% of
students claim to have bought the products recommended on social media sites and all
of these students are female and generally of a young age group compared to the
general age group of participants. The products that were reported are also very
distinctive in types: they are mainly weight loss and acne removal products. However,
the participants of this study only consist of university students only, who may have
somewhat different behaviors and attitudes towards the purchasing of products due to
their better financial conditions compared to the younger adolescents.

Possible Outcomes

Primarily the anxiety and concerns brought forth by social media can reduce the
self-confidence of people and also cause negative emotions about oneself (Rodger et
al., 2013) Some research shows that body dissatisfaction is associated with and might
even predict the onsets of depression in both male and female adolescents. This lack
of self-confidence may in the long run affect the academic performances and physical
of adolescent students. Moreover, it is suggested that the basic term of appearance
anxiety is a means for enterprises to gain profit. By promoting the desires to achieve
more ideal images, companies sell manifold beauty instruments, weight losing
commodities and cosmetics to teen who neither has a suitable physical body or
matured mind to safely make use of these products. Another important point is that
disordered eating habits may also be linked to the usage of social media. Previous
studies suggests that social media exposure are associated with some unhealthy food
choices (Rounsefell, Gibson, 2019) This investigation which consisted of a systematic
research of thirty studies reported that young woman who are exposed to more ideal
photos of celebrities, peers and fitness contents on Instagram (social media site)
endures greater body dissatisfaction and also reveal more weight loss behaviors.

Methodology

The primary aim of this dissertation is to provide a more detailed analysis of whether
body image anxiety can be promoted by viewing related content on social media sites
in the adolescent population, and which specific content provokes the strongest degree
of body dissatisfaction. This work aims to find which specific aspect of body image
concern is provoked the most easily when viewing social media pages. Furthermore,
as this study is aimed at the teenaged population as a whole both first hand research
especially included male samples and shall include investigations on how the gender
differences affected participants’ response to contents. Finally, the behaviors provoked
by such anxiety and stress, such as the purchasing of body management-related goods
or the starting of diets is also a subject this study aims to discuss.

Questionnaire and Interview

The research samples of this study are adolescent students (aged between 13 and 19)
in China. Participants were required to complete a questionnaire with a range of
questions including basic information of participants’ ages and genders, questions of
the emotions and feelings of participants when viewing specific content, and
questions asking of the specific subjects that disturb the highest level of body image
anxiety. The questionnaire was made on Wenjuanxing.com and distributed through
social media chat groups. The reason for this is so that the individuals who gain
access to the questionnaires are more likely to be frequent users of the social media.
In addition to collecting more detailed information interviews with three participants
were also arranged. To make the results diverse the three participants consist of both
genders and have reported on different states of body image anxiety.

A total of 51 valid questionnaire results were received in the 2-month period when it
was distributed. 35.29% of participants answered that they have felt body image
concerns after viewing a range of listed content from social media platforms and thus
answered on the following questions of what subject of body image are participants
most concerned about.

Secondary Research

Another method that was used is secondary research. Articles containing previous
studies on topic relative to the relationship between social media usage and body
image anxiety were downloaded from academic publishing websites. The Springer
website and the Wiley online library were used particularly frequently and a few
online journals had been extremely helpful: The International Journal of Eating
Disorders provided multiple valuable insights on previous quantitative studies on the
connections between social media usage and body dissatisfaction. Studies on the
primary causes of body image dissatisfaction, peer influence on body image anxiety
and disordered eating habits were also included to develop the logic in the
investigation. The value and the relevance of the content are then evaluated through
the CRAVEN method and the results and findings of these articles are then used to
inspire this investigation.
Statistical Analysis

In addition to the data collection and secondary research, the method of statistical
analysis was also used in the study to find out the relationships between the specific
factors discussed. The specific model used is a test of correlation: the Pearson
Correlation Coefficient Test. This test involves entering the data of two factors as X
values and Y values, with the X value as the influencing factor and the Y value as the
influenced value. The test then provides an R-value which decides whether the
relationship is positive or negative (R>0, positive; R<0, negative) and whether it is
strong or weak. Then according to this R-value and the number of data (N) a P value
is then calculated to determine the significance level of the data (P<0.05) is
commonly viewed as significant. To make the data more trustworthy both of the
websites https://www.socscistatistics.com and spssau.com were used.

Ethical Considerations

The participants in all parts of this investigation have been informed of what
information will be collected, what this study aims to investigate and for what purpose
this information will be used. The data were collected under anonymous conditions:
although basic information of age and gender had to be collected, no private
information of names or other details that might expose the participants’ identity have
been collected. Under no circumstances shall this investigation expose any of these
collected content to anyone unrelated to the research. All permissions from
participants have been received ahead of the investigation.

Results

Results of Correlation Tests

Similar to the results of the previous studies, the degree of stress felt by participants
have a positive relationship with the number of time spent on social media sites.
Calculations shows that there is a weak but positive relation. The P value is less than
the standard of 0.05 (0.017), providing proof that this value bears its statistical
significance.

Pearson Correlation (Detail)

4、How stressed do you think you are about body

image?
Coefficient 0.334*
number in
p value 0.017
minutes
Sample number 51

* p<0.05 ** p<0.01

Diagram1 correlation test between stress level and time spent on social media
What is surprising is that in contrary to the hypothesis that girls tend to have a higher
level of body image anxiety than boys, male participants actually showed a slightly
higher level of body image anxiety than their female counterparts.
Nevertheless,possibly due to the minimum amount of available data, the relation is
very weak as it is -0.062, and the significance level is very low (p value is 0.667,
which is larger than 0.05) thus in terms it is possible that this may just a random result
without statistical significance.
Pearson Correlation (Detail)

4、How stressed do you think you are about body

image?
Coefficient -0.062
rating of gender
p value 0.667
(whether or not
Sample
female) 51
number

* p<0.05 ** p<0.01
Diagram2 correlation test between stress level and gender
The viewing of all the three content can all provoke body image anxiety. The
significance value of all three of the contents are very high (p<0.01). According to the
data, the contents containing celebrities talking about body image is the most stressing,
however the deference in content is not particularly significant.
Pearson Correlation (Detail)

4、How stressed do you

think you are about body
image?
5、How often do you stop to watch videos Coefficient 0.526**
about professional celebrities talking about p value 0.000
improving body image when you come Sample
51
across it on social medias? number
6、How often do you stop to watch videos of Coefficient 0.488**
individuals recording their body management p value 0.000
vlogs on social media, when you see it on Sample
51
social media? number
Coefficient 0.510**
7、How much attention do you pay to the
p value 0.000
pictures and videos people posted on their
Sample
personal pages of themselves? 51
number

* p<0.05 ** p<0.01
Diagram3 correlation test between stress level and attention paid to individual
contents
A linear regression was also done to find out the relationship between the extent of
stress and the number of minutes spent on social media sites. Same to the correlation
test a weak positive relationship was found.
Diagram4 linear regression of stress level and time spent on social media

Diagram5 linear regression of stress level and time spent on social media

Results of interviews

Surprisingly, the answers provided by all three of the interviewees were similar in
many aspects, regardless of gender. Same to what was discovered in the previous
studies, all three of the participants stated that their state of body dissatisfaction
generally worsened when they used social media sites more often. The most frequent
worries were of body shape, and surprisingly all three participants claimed that they
felt the most significant level of dissatisfaction towards their legs, noting the same
concern of it being ‘too thick’, however the exact source of such worries differs (both
from online and remarks of relations).
1. Which part of your body are you most dissatisfied about? Where did you get the
idea that it is not perfect?
Participant.1 My upper legs,they ‘re too thick. I mostly interpreted this info from the
internet, from others’ comments etc. Mostly others’ snap shots.

Participant.2 My legs. This is mainly due to the fact that it is the thickest part of my
body, and also many of my friends and family have told me about it before, things like
that it is fat
Mostly my mother told me lots about such things., and that’s when the stress starts.

Participant.3:My ribs and the entire leg of mine.I got these impression mainly from
photos online and my family and friends told me lots about these things.

Other similarities were the desires of muscles and the emphasis of the importance of
health on the pursuit for a better body image. However generally participants believes
the common trends on the internet to be almost to their own likes: the popular phase
White, Young, and Thin appeared multiple times in participants’ answers, regardless
of gender.

Participant 2: The upper one on the right. Judging to what I’ve heard about the trend
now prefer man to have few muscles and to be a bit feminine. The popular trend of
white, thin and youth not only restricts women but men too. All these trends cares
about is for people to be more white, and thin, but not to support a healthy life.

Participant 3: The woman in this photo appeals very much to the white,thin,young
standard that is very trendy on the internet right now.

Gender and a too ideal body image were also complained about throughout the
interview. The male participant stated that the considered desirable image too be too
feminine. Another thing was that all participants ideas close to that their stresses are
provoked by actual real living humans and not invented figures of anime figures
which are “too ideal ”

Participant 1: Talks about the appearances of Actual people, related with actually
human, not virtual manga characters.It angers me to see lessons online teaching
people how to have manga like legs because these appearances were at first made up
to satisfy the unrealistic likes of man and its absurd for people to actually try to look
like these figures, but not very stressed my self.

Participant 2: Almost anything, but mostly social news and some times some scandals,
things I find interesting of actual people.

Participant 3: Funny videos and cosplay and contents related to movies. The more of
human like image the videos expresses the more anxiety it brings me. But I don’t feel
so stressed that I starts projects on the spot.

Finally the contents of “lessons taught to improve body image “were mentioned in
numerous times and ways in causing stress. The specific content each participants
picked out to be “stress causing” differs respectively. However the ability of the
content to “make there seem to be a need for changes to the targets themselves were
mentioned multiple times. The offensive nature of the content was also mention
during one of the interviews.

After finishing the videos above

Which content do you believe can bring forth the most significant level of body image
anxiety? Please explain your choice.

Participant 1:The content which lists a list of the body weight of the female celebrities
is one of the most stress bringing content. More over was the comparisons of the looks
before and after weight losing. I actually got a sense of feeling that I have to take
measures to lose weight. In other words it made weight losing seem relevant to me

Participant 2: The one which lists all the different people’s appearances and called
people by made up names was really offensive, mainly because it was very rude and is
a bit of an insult, at least teasing really.

Participant 3: The content......... It make people feel guilty during daily eating.
Results of Questionnaire

Of the 51 valid results of the questionnaire, 72.55% (n=37) were answered by female
participants and 27.45%(n=14) were from male participants. For the answer of
whether one feels uncomfortable after viewing listed contents which were suspected
to provoke body image anxiety, 35.29% of participants answered yes, while the extent
of body dissatisfaction felt after viewing different contents were very close (lectures
on how to improve body image, others’ vlogs and photos of others all caused roughly
2.5 out of 5 level of stress.) However according to a further question, compared to
other possible factors like others’ body image management records, celebrities talking
about their own body image and the snap-shots of friends and family members are the
most stress promoting factors that may lead to body dissatisfaction.

Diagram6 Pie chat showing the respective proportion of people who claims to
feel stress after viewing exact content
As found in the interview, the shapes of bodies is an important aspect of boy image
anxiety. Weight, as possibly the most quantitative aspect is the top concern of
participant, and facial image was also reported to make up a large part of the concerns.
Astoundingly in contrary to the manifold mentions of muscle amount in the interview
results, only 17.65% of participant answered that they feel stressed about their amount
of muscles.
Diagram7 bar chart showing respective proportion of people who claims to feel
stress from specific parts of their body
Results shows that in truth the proportion of participants that haven’t had any
previous body management experience is small. Despite the low average level of
stress (2.59 out of 5), most participants claimed to have at least tried body
management programs before and almost 20% have tried multiple times. Over half of
the participants answered that they have tried once or twice, providing evidence that
attempts of body management programs are actually quite common among
adolescents in this age.

Diagram8 bar chart showing the frequency of teenager’s engagement in body

management programs
The purchasing of body image improving products due to seeing related apps online
proved to be rare. The majority of participant replied that they haven’t had such
experience at all.
.

Diagram9 bar chart showing the frequency of teenager’s purchase of body image
related products due to advertisements seen on social medias

Discussion

Similar to the conclusions reached by previous studies stating that more frequent
social media users generally has a higher level of body dissatisfaction, this
investigation found that there does exists a positive correlation between internet usage

（measures in the amount of time spent online) and the extent of body dissatisfaction

felt by adolescents. However, this correlation is weak. In contrary to the common

suggestion that females tends to feel more body dissatisfaction (Silberstein &
Striegel-Moore, 1988), there was no evidence found that can support the hypothesis
that female adolescents tends to feel more stressed after seeing relative information on
social media sites, thus it is more likely that gender does not affect the extent of stress
felt, and it is even possible that male adolescents are actually slightly more effected
by the contents they see on social media platforms, although due to lack of data there
isn’t enough proof to support such statement.

The contents that seem to bring about the most significant levels of dissatisfaction
appears to be related with real life images. Not only was the words “actual human”
mentioned multiple times throughout all three of the interviews, but also the
“snap-shots” of others ranking as one of the top sources of body image dissatisfaction.
Just as what was stated in (Thompson et al. 1999), content with ideal images dues
promotes high degrees of stress, but furthermore contents that can potentially let
people make comparisons between themselves and others’ figures appears to cause
more dissatisfaction than those which only provide an ideal image.

Close to what was discovered in (Xu & Wang, 2022), weight, body shape and facial
images are respectively the top three most stress-promoting parts of the body. Factors
that consist of a mix of concerns for such three parts, for example the over thickness
of some part of the body(legs) can be extremely common. The “ideal” trend wish for
these aspects are to be “thin, white, and young”, however there are a significant of
individuals who value the amounts of muscles, regardless of gender, though the
terminal aim for such qualities is likely to be health. Body management is found to be
quite common among teenagers, however there was no clear proof for its linkage with
body dissatisfaction.

Evaluation

The first and greatest limit of this investigation was the limited amount of data. The
51 samples could not support correlation tests with high significance, thus resulting in
the lack of proof for many relations found. Another fault was the way how the
questionnaire mainly consisted of subjective questions of multiple choices, which
could not allow the participants to widely express their objective opinions, thus some
valuable data might have not been successfully collected. Last of all much of the data
were collected through direct questions to the participants, and so in terms if
participants had not been honest or clear while providing their answers the data this
investigation was based on and furthermore the statements that was reached may be
unreliable.

On the other hand this study has also made many progresses. By offering choice of
stressed contents in the questionnaire the number of people who felt stressed about
specific content could be calculated, offering a better insight on the proportion of
adolescents who felt stress due to specific subjects. The open questions in the
interview also allowed exact ideas of participant to be collected, helping the study to
emphasis on aspects the interviewees reported to be important.

Conclusion

In conclusion, this study has found that social media usage have a positive but weak
influence on the extent of body image and shape anxiety felt by teenagers. It has
provided further insight on the specific types of content, concluding that contents
associated with real human images attributed the most to such stress, and also that
body weight and shape are the most commonly concerned aspects of the body.
Moreover, it was discovered that the belief that females are influenced more is wrong.
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