Social Anxiety: Predicting Body Dissatisfaction via Social Media

The rise in body dissatisfaction in adolescents and young adults has been connected to the rise in visual social media consumption. A mediator between these two variables is social appearance comparison, though variables affecting the salience of this mediator have not been studied extensively. This study aimed to see whether social anxiety could have an effect on the salience of appearance comparison as a mediator. As motivations for social media use and type of SM content have previously been shown to have effects, the relationship between these variables and social anxiety has been investigated as well. Thirty-three participants were measured on levels of social anxiety and body dissatisfaction and were subsequently exposed to 9 YouTube Short videos of different types of typical social media content. Appearance comparison and regular consumption of specific content were measured after viewing a video. Results showed a negative correlation (p=-0.4066) between social anxiety and body dissatisfaction, as well as higher levels of appearance comparison in the high social anxiety group for videos featuring the appearance of the creator. Especially high levels of appearance comparison were found for videos relating to fitness and weight loss. This provides evidence that those with higher social anxiety make more unfavorable appearance comparisons via social media and therefore are at higher risk for body dissatisfaction.