Different interactions with appearance-focused social media content and adolescents’ body dissatisfaction: A within-person perspective

Abstract

Social media use has often been linked to adolescents' body dissatisfaction, but longitudinal investigations of this relation are scarce. This three-wave panel study among N = 1032 adolescents contributes to the existing literature by testing the within-person relations between different interactions with appearance-focused social media content (i.e., exposure, liking, positively commenting and posting) and adolescents' body dissatisfaction, measured with a current versus ideal size discrepancy figure rating scale. The results of random-intercept cross lagged panel models showed that increased posting of appearance-focused content predicted decreased body dissatisfaction four months later. Yet, this finding was not consistent across both time intervals. In addition, increased exposure predicted decreased body dissatisfaction, yet only among boys. Liking and positively commenting did not predict adolescents' body dissatisfaction over time. These results indicate a self-affirming role of posting self-related appearance content and highlight boys’ positive agency over their social media use and body image.