Processing Body Image on Social Media: Gender Differences in Adolescent Boys’ and Girls’ Agency and Active Coping

Although scholars continue to debate the influence of social media on body image, increased social media use, especially engaging in appearance-related behaviors may be a potential risk factor for body dissatisfaction in adolescents. Little research has investigated how adolescents process appearanc...

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Vydáno v:Frontiers in psychology Ročník 12; s. 626763
Hlavní autoři: Mahon, Ciara, Hevey, David
Médium: Journal Article
Jazyk:angličtina
Vydáno: Frontiers Media S.A 21.05.2021
Témata:
adolescent(s)
body dissatisfaction
body image
coping strategies
positive body image
Psychology
social media
ISSN:1664-1078, 1664-1078
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Shrnutí:Although scholars continue to debate the influence of social media on body image, increased social media use, especially engaging in appearance-related behaviors may be a potential risk factor for body dissatisfaction in adolescents. Little research has investigated how adolescents process appearance-related content and the potential strategies they use to protect body image perceptions on social media. To investigate coping strategies used by adolescents, four qualitative focus groups were conducted with 29 adolescents (23 girls) aged 15–16 years ( M = 15.31, SD = 0.47) in mixed-gender Irish secondary schools. Thematic analysis revealed that adolescents employed many different behavioral strategies such as avoiding negative content and selecting positive content. Cognitive processing strategies such as critically evaluating body-related content, psychologically distancing from and positively reframing challenging content were also used, although less frequently. Boys appeared to exhibit greater positive agency over their bodies and social media use and tended to use more active coping styles than girls. Efforts to promote body image on social media such as body positive pages and exposing artificial social media content were considered limited in their effectiveness.
Bibliografie:ObjectType-Article-1
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This article was submitted to Human-Media Interaction, a section of the journal Frontiers in Psychology
Edited by: Nicola Bruno, University of Parma, Italy
Reviewed by: Christopher J. Ferguson, Stetson University, United States; Alessandro Soranzo, Sheffield Hallam University, United Kingdom
ISSN:1664-1078
1664-1078
DOI:10.3389/fpsyg.2021.626763