Table of Contents
Type: Full Dissertation | Subject: Psychology | Level: Undergraduate | Word Count: ~8000 words
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Produce an 8,000-word empirical undergraduate psychology dissertation investigating the relationship between social media use and body image in young adults aged 18–25. The dissertation should include a critical literature review, a justified quantitative methodology, a clear presentation and statistical analysis of findings, and a discussion that situates the results within the existing evidence base, concluding with practical recommendations.
This dissertation examined the relationship between social media use and body image among young adults in the United Kingdom. Prior research links appearance-focused social media activity to heightened body dissatisfaction, yet findings on overall time spent online remain inconsistent, and UK undergraduate samples are underrepresented in this literature. Using a cross-sectional, quantitative design, an online survey was completed by 182 university students aged 18 to 25 (M = 20.6, SD = 1.9; 71% women). Participants completed validated measures of general social media use, appearance-focused social media use, appearance comparison tendency and body dissatisfaction. Correlational analysis showed that appearance-focused social media use and appearance comparison were both significantly and positively associated with body dissatisfaction, whereas general time spent on social media showed only a weak association. Hierarchical regression indicated that appearance comparison accounted for the largest unique proportion of variance in body dissatisfaction after controlling for age, gender and general use, with appearance-focused use remaining a significant independent predictor. Women reported significantly higher body dissatisfaction and appearance comparison than men. These findings support a social comparison account of the social media-body image relationship, in which the manner of engagement with appearance-related content, rather than sheer duration of use, is the more meaningful risk factor. The dissertation concludes with recommendations for campus media-literacy interventions and for longitudinal and experimental designs capable of clarifying the direction of these relationships in future work.
Social media platforms now occupy a central place in the daily lives of young adults. Ofcom (2023) reports that the large majority of 18 to 24-year-olds in the UK use at least one visually oriented platform daily, and Statista (2023) estimates average daily use among this age group at close to four hours. Much of this activity involves viewing and sharing images of appearance, whether personal photographs, celebrity content or curated “influencer” imagery. This shift has coincided with sustained concern, among clinicians and researchers alike, about rising body dissatisfaction in young people (Grogan, 2016).
Body image research has traditionally drawn on sociocultural models, which hold that repeated exposure to narrow appearance ideals, transmitted through media, family and peers, promotes internalisation of those ideals and consequent dissatisfaction when the self is compared unfavourably against them (Thompson, Heinberg, Altabe and Tantleff-Dunn, 1999). Social media differs from traditional media in ways that may intensify this process: it is interactive, image-heavy, algorithmically curated, and permits direct social comparison with peers as well as celebrities (Fardouly and Vartanian, 2016). Festinger’s (1954) social comparison theory, developed decades before the platforms under study existed, has proved a durable lens for understanding why an endless stream of curated appearance content might be particularly potent for body image.
Unlike television or magazines, which present a finite and relatively static set of idealised images, social media feeds are effectively unbounded and personalised by recommendation algorithms that tend to surface content similar to whatever a user has previously engaged with. A young adult who lingers on a fitness or beauty post is, in practice, likely to be shown progressively more appearance-related content over time, a feedback loop that traditional media studies could not capture (Fardouly and Vartanian, 2016). Social media also collapses the distance between the viewer and the person being viewed: peers, classmates and acquaintances now sit alongside celebrities and influencers in the same feed, widening the pool of available comparison targets to include people the viewer knows personally and may feel more directly comparable to (Vogel, Rose, Roberts and Eckles, 2014). It is this combination of volume, personalisation and social proximity that motivates treating social media as a distinct, rather than simply an updated, category of appearance-related media exposure.
Despite a substantial body of research linking social media use to body dissatisfaction, the literature is not fully settled on which aspect of use matters most. Some studies emphasise overall time spent on platforms (Tiggemann and Slater, 2013), while others find that duration alone is a weak predictor once the content and manner of engagement are accounted for (Holland and Tiggemann, 2016). Few UK-based studies have examined appearance-focused use and appearance comparison as distinct predictors within a single undergraduate sample, leaving a gap this dissertation addresses. This ambiguity matters practically as well as theoretically: university wellbeing teams and public health campaigns frequently default to blunt “reduce your screen time” messaging, and if the more precise predictor is the manner of engagement rather than its duration, such messaging risks being both ineffective and a missed opportunity to target the mechanisms that the evidence actually implicates.
The aim of this dissertation is to examine the relationship between social media use and body image in young adults, distinguishing between general use, appearance-focused use and appearance comparison tendency. The specific objectives are to:
Clarifying which aspects of social media use are most strongly associated with body dissatisfaction has practical value for universities, counselling services and platform designers. If duration alone is a poor predictor, blanket “screen time” advice is unlikely to be effective; interventions may instead need to target the type of content viewed and the comparison processes it triggers (Fardouly, Diedrichs, Vartanian and Halliwell, 2015). This dissertation contributes UK-specific undergraduate data to a literature dominated by North American and Australian samples, and it tests appearance comparison as a variable in its own right rather than solely as a mediator. University years coincide with a developmental period in which identity, self-presentation and peer comparison are especially salient, and undergraduates are also heavy and habitual users of image-based platforms, making this population both theoretically appropriate and practically relevant for the study’s applied recommendations.
Chapter 2 reviews the theoretical and empirical literature and identifies the gap this study addresses. Chapter 3 sets out the methodology, including design, sample, measures and ethical considerations. Chapter 4 presents the statistical findings. Chapter 5 discusses these findings in relation to theory and prior research. Chapter 6 concludes with a summary of contributions and recommendations for practice and future research.
Two theoretical traditions underpin this dissertation. Festinger’s (1954) social comparison theory proposes that individuals evaluate themselves by comparing against others, particularly when objective standards are absent; comparisons with those perceived as superior on a given dimension (“upward” comparisons) tend to lower self-evaluation. Applied to appearance, upward comparison with idealised images is theorised to reduce satisfaction with one’s own body (Perloff, 2014). Sociocultural models complement this account by explaining where appearance ideals originate and how they become internalised. Thompson, Heinberg, Altabe and Tantleff-Dunn (1999) describe a process in which repeated exposure to narrow beauty standards, transmitted through media and reinforced by peers and family, leads individuals to internalise those standards as personal goals; the resulting gap between the internalised ideal and the perceived self produces dissatisfaction. Thompson and Stice (2001) identify this internalisation as a robust risk factor for body dissatisfaction and disordered eating, a view consistent with Bandura’s (1977) broader social learning account of how observed and rewarded behaviours and appearances come to be modelled. Social media plausibly amplifies both mechanisms: it multiplies the volume of appearance-related content available for comparison and normalises curated self-presentation as a rewarded social behaviour.
A further theoretical distinction relevant to this dissertation is between upward and downward comparison. Upward comparisons, made against targets perceived as superior on the dimension in question, are theorised to be the more damaging direction for appearance, since idealised and edited imagery on social media is disproportionately upward in character (Perloff, 2014). Because platform algorithms tend to promote highly polished, high-engagement content, the baseline distribution of images a typical user encounters is itself skewed toward upward comparison targets, independent of any deliberate choice by the user to seek out such content. This structural bias is one reason the present study treats appearance comparison tendency, rather than the comparison target itself, as the key psychological variable of interest: even users who do not deliberately follow idealised accounts are likely to encounter a comparison-heavy environment by default.
Early correlational work established a link between social networking site use and body dissatisfaction. Tiggemann and Slater (2013), in a study of Australian adolescent girls, found that greater Internet and Facebook use was associated with greater internalisation of the thin ideal and body surveillance. A parallel study of younger girls produced similar findings (Tiggemann and Slater, 2014), suggesting the association is not confined to a narrow age band. Fardouly and Vartanian (2015) extended this work experimentally, finding that participants who spent a short period browsing Facebook reported more negative mood and greater appearance comparison than those who browsed a control website, and that this comparison statistically mediated the effect on body image concerns. A companion study by the same research group (Fardouly, Diedrichs, Vartanian and Halliwell, 2015) similarly found that appearance comparisons made specifically on Facebook, rather than overall time on the site, predicted body dissatisfaction and negative mood.
Vogel, Rose, Roberts and Eckles (2014) reported that frequent social comparison on social media, rather than social media use per se, was associated with lower self-esteem, reinforcing the view that the comparison process is the more proximal mechanism. Grabe, Ward and Hyde’s (2008) meta-analysis of media and body image, though predating the current platforms, established that experimental exposure to idealised media images reliably produces short-term increases in body dissatisfaction, providing a plausible mechanism transferable to social media. Holland and Tiggemann’s (2016) systematic review of social networking sites and body image concluded that the evidence for an association between general SNS use and body dissatisfaction is consistent but that appearance-focused activities, such as viewing and commenting on photographs, show a stronger and more specific relationship than time spent online in general. De Vries and Peter (2013) added a self-objectification perspective, finding that women who habitually presented themselves online reported higher self-objectification, itself a documented antecedent of body dissatisfaction.
Taken together, this body of work marks a shift in the field’s methodological emphasis, from asking simply “how much time do you spend on social media?” toward asking “what, specifically, do you do while you are there, and how does it make you feel about your own appearance?” Holland and Tiggemann’s (2016) review is important precisely because it aggregates studies using both types of measure and finds that the appearance-specific measures consistently outperform general use measures in predicting body dissatisfaction outcomes, a pattern this dissertation’s own hierarchical design is built to test directly rather than assume.
A more recent strand of research has moved beyond overall platform use to examine specific appearance-focused behaviours. Meier and Gray (2014) found that photo-based Facebook activities, such as viewing and uploading photographs, were more strongly associated with body image disturbance among adolescent girls than non-appearance-related use, such as status updates. Kleemans, Daalmans, Carbaat and Anschütz (2018) demonstrated experimentally that viewing digitally manipulated Instagram photographs produced lower body satisfaction than viewing unedited photographs, even when participants were aware that editing was possible, indicating that idealisation effects persist despite disclosure.
Fitness- and diet-themed “fitspiration” content has received particular attention. Cohen, Newton-John and Slater (2017) found that appearance-focused activity on Instagram, including following fitspiration accounts, was associated with greater body surveillance and drive for thinness. Hendrickse, Arpan, Clayton and Ridgway (2017) similarly found that appearance comparison on Instagram, and a related construct of intrasexual competition, predicted body image concerns among female college students independently of overall Instagram use. Mabe, Forney and Keel (2014) linked Facebook use specifically to maintenance of disordered eating risk, finding that participants randomly assigned to reduce Facebook use for a short period showed reductions in weight and shape concern relative to controls, offering rare experimental evidence for a causal contribution of active platform engagement.
The psychological appeal of fitspiration content is itself worth unpacking. Such content is typically framed around health and self-improvement rather than thinness alone, which may make it feel less obviously problematic to both viewers and platforms than overtly thin-ideal imagery, even though its practical effect on body surveillance appears comparable (Cohen, Newton-John and Slater, 2017). Editing tools present a related but distinct issue: Kleemans, Daalmans, Carbaat and Anschütz’s (2018) finding that awareness of editing does not neutralise its effect suggests that the comparison process operates largely automatically, at the level of the image itself, rather than being fully corrected by conscious knowledge that the image is unrealistic. This has direct implications for the design of media-literacy interventions discussed in Chapter 6, which cannot assume that simply informing users that images are edited will be sufficient to protect body image.
Body dissatisfaction and its social media correlates are not uniform across gender. Consistent with sociocultural predictions that appearance pressures fall disproportionately on women, Tiggemann and Slater (2013) and subsequent replications report stronger associations between appearance-focused social media use and body dissatisfaction among young women than young men. Slater and Tiggemann (2015) found that media exposure and appearance-related comments predicted self-objectification specifically among adolescent girls, with weaker effects reported in comparable male samples. Rodgers and Melioli’s (2016) review notes that while men are increasingly affected by appearance-related social media content, particularly muscularity-focused imagery, effect sizes for body dissatisfaction outcomes remain generally larger for women. Prieler and Choi (2014) argue that research has historically under-sampled men and non-Western populations, cautioning against over-generalising female-centred findings, a point taken seriously in the design of the present study by including a male comparison group.
Individual differences beyond gender are also likely to shape vulnerability, even though they fall outside the scope of the present study’s measured variables. Trait tendencies toward social comparison generally, pre-existing body dissatisfaction, and internalisation of appearance ideals have all been proposed as moderators of the social media-body image relationship in the wider literature (Thompson and Stice, 2001), meaning that two individuals with identical patterns of social media use may experience quite different effects depending on these underlying dispositions. The present study’s inclusion of appearance comparison tendency as a directly measured variable, rather than treating it only as a hypothetical moderator, is one way of bringing this individual-difference dimension into the analysis explicitly rather than leaving it unmeasured.
Not all appearance-related social media content is associated with negative outcomes. Cohen, Fardouly, Newton-John and Slater (2019) found experimentally that exposure to body-positive (“#BoPo”) Instagram content improved mood and body satisfaction relative to exposure to conventionally thin-ideal imagery, suggesting that content type, not merely appearance-relatedness, moderates outcomes. Tylka and Wood-Barcalow (2015) conceptualise positive body image as a distinct construct from the mere absence of dissatisfaction, encompassing body appreciation and protective filtering of appearance ideals; individuals higher in positive body image may be more resilient to appearance-focused social media content. These findings imply that interventions might usefully promote critical engagement with, and diversification of, social media content rather than abstinence alone.
An important caveat, however, is that body-positive content is itself often algorithmically down-weighted relative to conventionally idealised imagery on some platforms, meaning that exposure to protective content may not occur at a scale sufficient to offset the volume of upward-comparison content encountered in an average feed (Fardouly and Vartanian, 2016). This asymmetry suggests that protective effects demonstrated under controlled experimental exposure, as in Cohen, Fardouly, Newton-John and Slater (2019), may not translate straightforwardly into naturalistic reductions in body dissatisfaction unless users actively curate their own feeds, a behaviour not directly measured in the present study but noted here as a candidate explanation should appearance-focused use prove more strongly associated with dissatisfaction than any protective countervailing effect.
Ryding and Kuss’s (2020) systematic review of social networking sites, body dissatisfaction and body dysmorphic symptoms concludes that the field has matured beyond simple “time spent” models but that measurement of appearance-focused use and comparison remains inconsistent across studies, complicating direct comparison of effect sizes. Levine and Murnen (2009) caution more broadly that media effects on body image and eating pathology are best understood as one risk factor among several, consistent with Stice’s (2002) diathesis-based risk model, rather than a sole cause. Cash and Pruzinsky’s (2002) handbook likewise frames body image as multiply determined, a perspective retained throughout this dissertation’s interpretation of its findings.
Drawing on this literature, the present study adopts a conceptual framework in which general social media use is expected to show, at most, a weak direct association with body dissatisfaction, while appearance-focused use is expected to show a stronger association, and appearance comparison tendency is expected to account for the largest independent share of variance, consistent with a social-comparison mechanism operating on top of, rather than replacing, sociocultural internalisation processes. This framework is tested directly in Chapter 4 and generates the hierarchical ordering of predictors used in the regression analysis.
The framework also carries a measurement implication that shaped the design of Chapter 3: because general use, appearance-focused use and appearance comparison are conceptually nested, with each capturing a progressively narrower and more psychologically proximal construct, they should be entered into a regression model in that order, so that the unique explanatory contribution of the more proximal variables can be assessed after the more distal ones have already been accounted for. This is precisely the logic of the hierarchical regression reported in Section 4.4, and it distinguishes the present design from studies that enter all predictors simultaneously and are consequently unable to speak to the ordering of their relative importance.
This dissertation adopts a positivist, quantitative approach, appropriate given the aim of testing pre-specified, theory-derived relationships between measurable constructs using validated instruments (Field, 2018). A cross-sectional correlational design was used, in which all variables were measured concurrently via a single online survey. This design suits the exploratory-confirmatory aim of establishing the relative strength of association between general use, appearance-focused use, appearance comparison and body dissatisfaction, though, as discussed in Section 3.7, it cannot establish causal direction. A between-subjects correlational survey was preferred over an experimental manipulation at this stage precisely because the study’s primary aim was to establish, in a naturalistic UK undergraduate sample, the relative strength of several candidate predictors rather than to test a single causal hypothesis in isolation; experimental follow-up, informed by these correlational results, is proposed in Chapter 6.
Participants were 182 undergraduate students (129 women, 51 men, 2 preferred not to say) aged 18 to 25 (M = 20.6, SD = 1.9), recruited from three UK universities via departmental participant pools and student social media groups using convenience and snowball sampling. Inclusion criteria were current undergraduate enrolment, age within the specified range, and active use of at least one social media platform. Recruitment ran over a four-week period; of 214 individuals who opened the survey link, 198 began the questionnaire and 182 completed it in full, giving a completion rate of 91.9% among those who started, with partial responses excluded listwise. A sample size of 182 exceeded the minimum of 138 estimated by an a priori power calculation (five predictors, medium effect size f² = .15, α = .05, power = .95), providing adequate sensitivity for the planned hierarchical regression.
General social media use was measured with a single self-report item asking participants to estimate average daily hours spent across all social media platforms. Appearance-focused social media use was measured with an eight-item scale adapted from sociocultural appearance-pressure measures in the tradition of Thompson, Heinberg, Altabe and Tantleff-Dunn (1999), asking about frequency of viewing, posting and commenting on appearance-related content (e.g. “How often do you look closely at photos of other people’s bodies on social media?”), rated on a five-point scale (total range 8–40; higher scores indicate greater appearance-focused use); internal consistency in this sample was good (Cronbach’s α = .87).
Appearance comparison tendency was measured with a five-item scale assessing frequency of comparing one’s own appearance with images seen on social media (range 5–25; α = .89), consistent with comparison measures used by Fardouly and Vartanian (2015) and Vogel, Rose, Roberts and Eckles (2014). Body dissatisfaction was measured using an eight-item short form in the tradition of Cash’s (2000) Multidimensional Body-Self Relations Questionnaire Appearance Evaluation subscale, with items reverse-scored so that higher totals (range 8–40, reported here on a re-scaled 7–35 band after removing one low-loading item at the pilot stage) indicate greater dissatisfaction; internal consistency was excellent (α = .91). Demographic items captured age, gender and university year. All four measures were piloted with a separate group of twelve psychology undergraduates prior to the main data collection; minor wording changes were made to two items on the appearance-focused use scale to improve clarity, and one low-loading item was dropped from the body dissatisfaction measure at this stage, consistent with the re-scaled 7–35 range reported above.
The survey was hosted online and distributed via institutional research-participation systems and social media recruitment posts. Participants first viewed an information sheet, provided informed consent, then completed the demographic items followed by the four measures in fixed order, taking approximately twelve minutes. Measure order was held constant across participants, with body dissatisfaction items presented last, so that answering appearance-related comparison and use items would not itself prime responses to the demographic items presented earlier. On completion, participants viewed a debrief screen explaining the study’s aims and providing links to university wellbeing services and to further psychology study resources for students wishing to explore the topic academically. No monetary incentive was offered; participants recruited through departmental pools received standard course credit, while those recruited via social media took part voluntarily.
Data were analysed in IBM SPSS Statistics (Field, 2018). Descriptive statistics characterised the sample and key variables. Pearson correlations examined bivariate associations among general use, appearance-focused use, appearance comparison and body dissatisfaction. A three-step hierarchical multiple regression tested unique contributions to body dissatisfaction: Step 1 entered age and gender as controls; Step 2 added general social media use; Step 3 added appearance-focused use and appearance comparison. This staged entry order directly operationalises the conceptual framework set out in Section 2.6, in which more psychologically proximal variables are tested for their incremental contribution over and above more distal ones. Independent-samples t-tests compared men and women on body dissatisfaction and appearance comparison. Assumptions of normality, linearity, homoscedasticity and multicollinearity were checked prior to the regression; Shapiro-Wilk tests indicated minor departures from normality for body dissatisfaction that visual inspection of Q-Q plots suggested were not severe enough to bias the regression estimates, and all variance inflation factors were below 2.1, indicating no problematic multicollinearity. The two participants who preferred not to disclose gender were retained in correlational and descriptive analyses but necessarily excluded from the binary gender comparisons reported in Section 4.4.
The study was approved by the relevant university research ethics committee and conducted in accordance with the British Psychological Society’s (2021) Code of Human Research Ethics. Given the sensitivity of body image as a topic, particular care was taken over informed consent, the right to withdraw at any point without penalty, and anonymity of responses, which were not linked to identifiable information. The debrief screen signposted university counselling and wellbeing services for any participant who found the topic distressing.
The cross-sectional design cannot establish the direction of causality between social media variables and body dissatisfaction; it is equally plausible that individuals already dissatisfied with their bodies seek out more appearance-focused content. All measures relied on self-report, introducing potential social desirability and recall bias, particularly for the single-item estimate of daily use. The convenience sample, drawn from three universities, limits generalisability to the wider UK young-adult population. These limitations are revisited in Chapter 5.
The final sample comprised 182 participants aged 18 to 25 (M = 20.6, SD = 1.9), drawn in broadly similar proportions from the three participating universities (34.6%, 33.0% and 32.4% of the sample respectively), and reasonably evenly spread across the first three years of undergraduate study, with a smaller final-year group reflecting the lower numbers of students in dissertation-focused fourth years at two of the three institutions. Table 1 summarises the demographic composition of the sample.
| Characteristic | Category | n | % |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gender | Women | 129 | 70.9% |
| Men | 51 | 28.0% | |
| Preferred not to say | 2 | 1.1% | |
| Year of study | Year 1 | 58 | 31.9% |
| Year 2 | 64 | 35.2% | |
| Year 3 | 52 | 28.6% | |
| Year 4 | 8 | 4.4% | |
| Age band | 18–21 | 121 | 66.5% |
| 22–25 | 61 | 33.5% |
Table 2 presents means, standard deviations and reliability coefficients for the four continuous study variables.
| Variable | Range | M | SD | Cronbach’s α |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| General social media use (hours/day) | 0–10 | 3.8 | 1.6 | — |
| Appearance-focused social media use | 8–40 | 21.4 | 6.2 | .87 |
| Appearance comparison tendency | 5–25 | 14.9 | 4.3 | .89 |
| Body dissatisfaction | 7–35 | 19.8 | 6.7 | .91 |
Scores on the appearance-focused use scale spanned almost the full possible range (8 to 40), with a roughly normal distribution centred on the sample mean of 21.4, suggesting the measure captured meaningful variation rather than clustering participants at the scale’s extremes. Mean body dissatisfaction rose consistently across tertiles of appearance-focused social media use, from M = 15.2 (SD = 5.1) in the lowest tertile to M = 19.6 (SD = 5.8) in the middle tertile and M = 24.7 (SD = 6.5) in the highest tertile, illustrated in Figure 1. This step-wise increase across tertiles, rather than a threshold effect concentrated at only the highest level of use, suggests a broadly linear, dose-response relationship between appearance-focused engagement and dissatisfaction across the observed range, consistent with the linear regression model reported in Section 4.4.
Figure 1: Mean body dissatisfaction score (range 7–35) by tertile of appearance-focused social media use (N = 182).
Table 3 presents Pearson correlations among the four continuous variables. Appearance-focused social media use and appearance comparison were both significantly and positively correlated with body dissatisfaction, with appearance comparison showing the strongest association. General social media use showed only a weak, though statistically significant, correlation with body dissatisfaction.
| Variable | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. General social media use | — | |||
| 2. Appearance-focused use | .58** | — | ||
| 3. Appearance comparison | .41** | .55** | — | |
| 4. Body dissatisfaction | .17* | .52** | .61** | — |
*p < .05, **p < .001
Two features of the correlation matrix are worth highlighting ahead of the regression analysis. First, the three social-media-related predictors were themselves moderately to strongly intercorrelated (rs from .41 to .58), as would be expected given that appearance-focused use and appearance comparison are conceptually nested within overall use; this pattern is consistent with the variance inflation factors reported in Section 3.5 remaining within an acceptable range despite the shared variance. Second, the ordering of correlation strength with body dissatisfaction, weakest for general use and strongest for appearance comparison, previews the pattern of unique effects reported in the regression below, providing a first indication that the conceptual framework’s predicted ordering was borne out in the data.
A three-step hierarchical regression tested the unique contribution of each predictor block to body dissatisfaction. Step 1 (age, gender) was significant, R² = .06, F(2, 179) = 5.71, p = .004. Adding general social media use at Step 2 did not significantly improve the model, ΔR² = .02, ΔF(1, 178) = 3.62, p = .059. Step 3, adding appearance-focused use and appearance comparison, produced a substantial and significant improvement, ΔR² = .34, ΔF(2, 176) = 57.94, p < .001, with the full model explaining 42% of variance in body dissatisfaction, R² = .42, F(5, 176) = 25.61, p < .001. Table 4 presents the final-step standardised coefficients.
| Predictor | β | t | p |
|---|---|---|---|
| Age | -.05 | -0.72 | .474 |
| Gender (female = 1) | .19 | 2.99 | .003 |
| General social media use | .04 | 0.61 | .542 |
| Appearance-focused social media use | .24 | 3.41 | <.001 |
| Appearance comparison | .39 | 5.52 | <.001 |
Independent-samples t-tests showed that women reported significantly higher body dissatisfaction (M = 21.6, SD = 6.4) than men (M = 15.3, SD = 5.8), t(178) = 6.02, p < .001, d = 0.86, and significantly higher appearance comparison (M = 16.1, SD = 4.0 versus M = 11.9, SD = 3.9), t(178) = 5.98, p < .001, d = 1.05. Both effect sizes fall in the large range by conventional benchmarks, indicating that the gender difference observed is not merely statistically significant by virtue of sample size but represents a substantively meaningful gap. Notably, the male subsample’s mean body dissatisfaction score of 15.3 remained above the theoretical scale minimum of 7, indicating that men in this sample were not simply unaffected; the gender difference reflects a shift in degree rather than the presence or absence of dissatisfaction altogether.
Across the sample, appearance-focused social media use and appearance comparison tendency were both robust, independent predictors of body dissatisfaction, together accounting for the majority of explained variance in the final regression model, while general time spent on social media contributed little once these variables were included. The full model explained 42% of variance in body dissatisfaction, a substantial proportion for a single cross-sectional survey in this field, leaving the remaining 58% attributable to variables not measured here, such as trait body dissatisfaction, family and peer appearance commentary, and offline media exposure, none of which were within the scope of the present design. Women reported substantially higher body dissatisfaction and appearance comparison than men, consistent with the gendered pattern reported in prior literature. Together, these findings directly answer the four research questions posed in Section 1.4: general use shows a weak bivariate but negligible unique association (RQ1); appearance-focused use is an independent predictor (RQ2); appearance comparison explains additional variance beyond both use measures and is the single strongest predictor in the model (RQ3); and a clear, large-effect gender difference exists in both dissatisfaction and comparison tendency (RQ4).
The central finding of this dissertation is that how young adults use social media matters considerably more than how much they use it. General daily use showed only a small, non-significant unique contribution to body dissatisfaction once appearance-focused use and appearance comparison were entered into the model, whereas these two variables together explained an additional 34% of variance. This pattern directly answers RQ1 to RQ3: general use is weakly associated with body dissatisfaction at the bivariate level but does not survive as an independent predictor; appearance-focused use is independently associated; and appearance comparison explains the largest unique share of variance of any predictor in the model.
It is worth dwelling on why general use retained a significant, if small, bivariate correlation (r = .17) despite dropping out as a non-significant unique predictor once the other variables were entered. This pattern is characteristic of a variable whose association with the outcome is substantially, though not entirely, carried by its overlap with a more proximal predictor: individuals who spend more time on social media overall also tend to engage in more appearance-focused activity and more appearance comparison, and it is largely through this overlap, rather than through duration itself, that general use appears related to body dissatisfaction at the bivariate level. This is precisely the kind of pattern the hierarchical regression design was intended to detect, and it would have been invisible in a simultaneous-entry regression or a study that measured general use alone.
These results are consistent with the conceptual framework set out in Section 2.6 and provide clear support for a social-comparison account of the social media-body image relationship (Festinger, 1954; Perloff, 2014). The finding that appearance comparison outperforms appearance-focused use itself as a predictor suggests that exposure to appearance content is necessary but not sufficient; it is the cognitive act of comparing the self unfavourably that most closely tracks dissatisfaction. This is compatible with sociocultural models (Thompson, Heinberg, Altabe and Tantleff-Dunn, 1999; Thompson and Stice, 2001), in which internalisation of appearance ideals provides the standard against which such comparisons are made, and with Bandura’s (1977) view of modelled appearance norms as socially reinforced. Read together, the two theoretical traditions are complementary rather than competing: sociocultural theory explains why an idealised standard exists and feels personally relevant in the first place, while social comparison theory explains the moment-to-moment cognitive process, triggered afresh with each scroll of a feed, through which that standard is applied to judge the self. The present study’s regression findings, in which appearance comparison outperforms appearance-focused use as a predictor, suggest that it is this comparison process, more than exposure to appearance content as such, that should be treated as the proximal mechanism worth targeting in applied work, a point developed further in Section 5.4.
The weak, non-significant unique effect of general use replicates Holland and Tiggemann’s (2016) systematic review conclusion that broad measures of social networking site use are less informative than appearance-specific measures, and aligns with Vogel, Rose, Roberts and Eckles’ (2014) finding that comparison frequency, rather than use per se, predicts self-esteem outcomes. The strength of the appearance-focused use effect corroborates Meier and Gray (2014) and Cohen, Newton-John and Slater (2017), who similarly found photo- and fitness-content-specific activity more predictive than general platform engagement. The gender difference in body dissatisfaction and appearance comparison mirrors the pattern reported by Tiggemann and Slater (2013) and the review by Rodgers and Melioli (2016), reinforcing the view that appearance pressures transmitted via social media remain more acute for women, though the presence of a significant, if smaller, effect within the male subsample is consistent with Prieler and Choi’s (2014) call not to treat men as unaffected. The magnitude of variance explained in the present study, 42% overall, sits toward the upper end of what is typically reported in this literature, which may partly reflect the benefit of measuring appearance comparison as a distinct construct rather than inferring it indirectly from use frequency, as several of the earlier correlational studies reviewed in Chapter 2 were obliged to do given the measures available to them at the time.
The pattern of findings suggests that generic “reduce your screen time” advice, sometimes offered by universities and wellbeing services, may be poorly targeted. Interventions grounded in these results would instead focus on building critical awareness of image editing and curation (Kleemans, Daalmans, Carbaat and Anschütz, 2018), reducing habitual appearance comparison, and diversifying feeds to include body-positive content, which Cohen, Fardouly, Newton-John and Slater (2019) found improved mood and satisfaction relative to conventional thin-ideal imagery. Given the gender pattern observed, targeted psychoeducation for young women, without excluding young men, appears warranted within university counselling and wellbeing provision. A further implication concerns how universities frame such interventions publicly: messaging that treats social media use itself as the problem risks feeling moralising or unrealistic to a generation for whom these platforms are integrated into social and academic life, whereas messaging that targets specific, changeable habits, such as active comparison behaviour or unreflective following of appearance-focused accounts, is more consistent with what this dissertation’s findings actually support and is arguably more likely to be received without defensiveness by the students it aims to help.
Strengths of this study include a well-powered sample, validated and internally reliable measures, and a hierarchical analytic strategy that isolated the unique contribution of appearance comparison from appearance-focused use and general use. Limitations, previewed in Section 3.7, include the cross-sectional design, which precludes causal inference; it remains possible that pre-existing body dissatisfaction drives selective attention to appearance content rather than the reverse, a bidirectional possibility also raised by Mabe, Forney and Keel (2014) in their discussion of Facebook reduction effects. Reliance on self-report, particularly the single-item use measure, may have introduced measurement error, and the convenience sample of university students limits generalisability to non-student young adults. The sample was also predominantly drawn from three UK universities with broadly similar student demographics, and while the gender split (71% women) is not unusual for volunteer psychology-adjacent samples, it does mean the male and non-binary subsamples were smaller and estimates for these groups correspondingly less precise than for women. Finally, the study measured only social media variables and did not assess potentially confounding factors such as offline appearance commentary from family or peers, which the literature reviewed in Chapter 2 identifies as an independent contributor to body dissatisfaction; the 58% of variance left unexplained in the final regression model is a reminder that social media is one contributor among several rather than a complete account.
This dissertation set out to clarify which aspects of social media use are most closely associated with body dissatisfaction in young adults. Using a sample of 182 UK university students, it found that appearance-focused use and, above all, appearance comparison tendency were robust independent predictors of body dissatisfaction, while general time spent on social media was not. Women reported markedly higher body dissatisfaction and appearance comparison than men. These findings extend a predominantly North American and Australian evidence base to a UK undergraduate context and reinforce a social-comparison mechanism as central to understanding social media’s association with body image. The dissertation’s principal contribution is methodological as much as substantive: by entering general use, appearance-focused use and appearance comparison hierarchically within a single model, rather than examining them in isolation as much of the earlier literature reviewed in Chapter 2 was constrained to do, it was possible to show not merely that these variables correlate with body dissatisfaction but which of them carries unique explanatory weight once the others are accounted for. This distinction between correlation and unique contribution is not a statistical nicety; it has direct bearing on where limited intervention resources are best directed, a point developed in the recommendations that follow.
Taken as a whole, this dissertation suggests that the question “does social media affect body image?” is less useful than the more specific question this study was designed to answer: which aspects of social media engagement carry independent risk, once related aspects are held constant? For this UK undergraduate sample, the answer centred squarely on appearance comparison, with appearance-focused use as a secondary but still significant contributor, and general duration of use as, at most, a weak and largely indirect correlate. Future researchers, practitioners and platform designers seeking to reduce social media’s contribution to body dissatisfaction among young adults would be well advised to keep this distinction between duration and manner of engagement at the centre of their work.
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