Teens And Young Adults Who Reduced Social Media Use Were Found To Have Significant Improvements In Body Image
A recent study published by the American Psychological Association (APA) found that after teens and young adults cut down their use of social media by 50% for a few weeks, they witnessed a drastic improvement in body image.
The teens and young adults specifically felt better about their weight, as well as their overall appearance, as compared to peers who did not reduce social media use.
“Adolescence is a vulnerable period for the development of body image issues, eating disorders, and mental illness. Youth are spending, on average, between six to eight hours per day on screens, much of it on social media,” explained Gary Goldfield, the study’s lead author.
“Social media can expose users to hundreds or even thousands of images and photos every day, including those of celebrities and fashion or fitness models, which we know leads to an internalization of beauty ideals that are unattainable for almost everyone, resulting in greater dissatisfaction with body weight and shape.”
But, according to Goldfield, most of the psychological research surrounding social media, mental health, and body image is correlational.
In other words, it is unclear whether people struggling with mental health and body image issues are spending more time on social platforms; or if the social media use itself is leading to greater mental health and body image impacts.
That’s why Goldfield and his colleagues first conducted a past pilot study with 38 participants. Each participant was an undergraduate student suffering from elevated levels of depression and/or anxiety.
Some of the students were asked to cut down their social media use to a maximum of 60 minutes each day; meanwhile, other students were able to use social media for any amount of time.
The researchers ultimately found that participants who practiced restricted social media use had an improved regard for their overall appearance after just three weeks. Although, this was not the same for body weight perspectives.
insta_photos – stock.adobe.com – illustrative purposes only, not the actual person
Additionally, since the sample size was so small, the team was not able to conduct an analysis of the impact of gender.
So, the teams’ most recent experiment set out to expand on the pilot study– including 220 undergraduate students between the ages of 17 and 25. Among this group, 76% of the students identified as female; meanwhile, 23% identified as male, and 1% identified as other.
In other for students to qualify for the study, they had to be regular users of social media– spending a minimum of two hours online per day on their smartphones. Additionally, the students also had to show symptoms of anxiety or depression.
During the first week of the study, the participants were asked to continue using social media as usual.
This typical social media usage was measured via a screen time tracking program, which the students screenshotted and provided at the end of every day.
At the beginning of the experiment, the students also rated a series of statements regarding both weight and overall appearance using a 5-point scale– with 1 meaning “never” and 5 meaning “always.”
Then, following the first week, 50% of the participants were told to cut their social media use down to a maximum of 60 minutes per day.
And over the next three weeks, the students who were asked to restrict their social media use reduced their screen time by about 50%– averaging about 78 minutes per day of social media consumption. The control group, on the other hand, averaged 188 minutes per day.
Finally, at the end of the study, the students were instructed to take a similar questionnaire– rating statements about overall appearance and weight.
This questionnaire revealed that the students who had reduced their social media consumption also showed a significant improvement in regard to their overall appearance and body weight perception following an intervention period of just weeks.
Conversely, the control group showed no significant changes, and gender was not found to impact the effects.
“Our brief, four-week intervention using screentime trackers showed that reducing social media use yielded significant improvements in appearance and weight esteem in distressed youth with heavy social media use,” Goldfield concluded.
“Reducing social media use is a feasible method of producing a short-term positive effect on body image among a vulnerable population of users and should be evaluated as a potential component in the treatment of body-image-related disturbances.”
To read the study’s complete findings, visit the link here.
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