A Longitudinal Investigation of Perceptual Body Image and Media Influence Among Ethnically Diverse School Children in Rural Nicaragua

ABSTRACT Body dissatisfaction (BD) often arises from the discrepancy between a person's perceived body and an ‘ideal’ body. Mass media's adult‐targeted body ‘ideals’ also reach children and shape their body perceptions. BD is arising at increasingly younger ages in global north populations, however, there is scant research investigating media impacts on children's body perceptions in Latin American contexts. We longitudinally investigated the relationships of television viewing, age and gender with children's body size perceptual accuracy and child and adult body size ideals among Nicaraguan primary school children ( N = 170) living in rural communities with systematically varying media access. As expected, general body size accuracy increased with age. Girls, and not boys, who watched more television desired slimmer adult bodies, and showed greater own‐body size accuracy. Findings show shared and context‐specific patterns compared with global north samples, with media and developmental maturation each shaping different aspects of body perception.