Gender differences in diet and social media: An explorative study

Abstract

This study aimed to investigate the impact of social media on perceptions of food-related content. We asked participants a series of questions about their diet, attitudes, and social media use. We also manipulated food photos posted on Instagram to reveal varying degrees of information from the social media app (no Instagram information, icons visible, number of likes visible, or caption visible). Participants rated the foods in these photos based on how healthy they perceived them to be and how likely they were to eat them. We then used a 2X4 MANOVA to test whether healthy, unhealthy, and neutral foods were perceived differently between genders and conditions. Results showed no effect of condition, but indicated that men rated unhealthy foods as significantly healthier than women did. We also found that women's perceived healthiness ratings of healthy foods were positively correlated with ratings of how likely they were to eat them; in contrast, there were no relationships between perceived health and likelihood of eating any foods for men. Finally, results of our social media use questions indicated that Facebook was the most popular website used for finding recipes. These findings suggest that while we did not see any between-condition differences, social media may be a factor in what people eat. Furthermore, gender may be a key factor in this relationship.