The impact of body-positive and fitspirational influencers on body satisfaction: a longitudinal study of evolving parasocial relationships

Abstract Body-focused influencers are ubiquitous on social media, promoting diverse messages around physical appearances, fitness, and self-acceptance. This longitudinal study investigates how repeated exposure to body-positive, fitspirational, and nonbody-focused influencers shapes users’ parasocial relationship development, wishful identification, appearance-based social comparison, and body satisfaction over a 3-week period. Using a mobile-based experience sampling method, participants were exposed to daily influencer content and completed surveys at four time points (Nt1(Day 1) = 181, Nt2(Day 8) = 155, Nt3(Day 15) = 142, Nt4(Day 22) = 112). Findings show that parasocial relationships developed most strongly with the body-positive influencer, while no significant increase was found for the fitspirational and control conditions. Over time, exposure to body-positive content led to increases in wishful identification and body satisfaction, whereas fitspirational content did not produce significant longitudinal effects. Social comparison intensity was higher in both body-focused conditions compared to the control, but remained stable over time.