Abstract
Some adolescents use social media platforms, such as Instagram, for sexualized self-presentation, which includes posting images in which someone is scarcely dressed, has a sexy gaze or in which sexual willingness is suggested. These behaviors could be a first step towards sexting. Given that adolescents are highly influenced by peer perceptions, this study uses the prototype willingness model to assess how teenagers’ perceptions of others could influence their posting behaviors. The study was conducted among 2626 students (n = 1530; 58.4% girls) between the ages of 14 and 21 (M = 16.14; SD = 1.02) in 10 secondary schools in the Dutch-speaking community in Belgium. The results show that older adolescents and girls were more likely to post images of themselves on Instagram. The models showed that peer norms and willingness and attitudes were significantly associated with posting intention. The perceived norms of adolescents’ parents were not significantly related to the behaviors. There were also significant associations between perceived similarity, prototype favorability and the willingness to engage in sexualized self-presentation on Instagram. The implications for education and practice are discussed.
Highlights
We presented the respondents with a short introduction that provided a description of a prototype: “Many youth post sexy images of themselves on Instagram
We presented the respondents with the description of a hypothetical scenario to measure the concept of willingness: “Imagine that you would be looking at your Instagram feed and you would notice that many of your friends are posting sexy images of themselves
Posting sexy images on social media can be considered as a risk behavior for adolescents
Summary
Around 95% of US teenagers own a smartphone and 45% are almost permanently online [1]. In Europe, smartphones have become the preferred medium for online communication. Most teenagers use them daily or almost all the time [2]. One of the social media applications that has gained a lot of popularity over the recent years is Instagram. In the United States, 72% of youth are active users of the platform. In Belgium, where the current study was conducted, around 86% of youth report using Instagram on a weekly basis in 2019 [3]
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