Yang Hwajin, Wang Joy Jiaqi, Tng Germaine Y Q, Yang Sujin
School of Social Science, Singapore Management University, Singapore 178903, Singapore.
Department of Psychology, Ewha Womans University, Seoul 03760, Korea.
Children (Basel). 2020 Sep 21;7(9):148. doi: 10.3390/children7090148.
We examined the predictive relations of social media and smartphone use to body esteem in female adolescents and the mechanism that underlies these relations. As a result of frequent social media and smartphone use, adolescents are continually exposed to appearance-related media content. This likely reinforces a thin ideal and fosters appearance-based comparison and increases fear of external evaluation. Hence, we investigated a cognitive-affective framework in which the associations of social media and smartphone use with body esteem are serially mediated by cognitive internalization of an ideal body image, appearance comparisons, and social appearance anxiety. By testing female adolescents ( = 100) aged 13 to 18, we found that excessive social media use leads to unhealthy body esteem via intensified cognitive internalization, which aggravates appearance comparisons and anxiety regarding negative appearance evaluation. Further, we found that screen time for specific smartphone activities also harmed body esteem, independent of social media use. However, overall smartphone screen time did not affect body esteem when social media use was taken into consideration. Our findings underscore the multifactor mechanism that elucidates the negative impacts of social media and smartphone activities on body esteem in female adolescents, who are developmentally susceptible to poor body esteem.
我们研究了社交媒体和智能手机使用与女性青少年身体自尊之间的预测关系以及这些关系背后的机制。由于频繁使用社交媒体和智能手机，青少年不断接触与外貌相关的媒体内容。这可能强化了瘦的理想标准，促进基于外貌的比较，并增加对外部评价的恐惧。因此，我们研究了一个认知-情感框架，其中社交媒体和智能手机使用与身体自尊的关联是通过理想身体形象的认知内化、外貌比较和社交外貌焦虑依次介导的。通过对13至18岁的100名女性青少年进行测试，我们发现过度使用社交媒体会通过强化认知内化导致不健康的身体自尊，这会加剧外貌比较和对负面外貌评价的焦虑。此外，我们发现特定智能手机活动的屏幕使用时间也会损害身体自尊，与社交媒体使用无关。然而，考虑到社交媒体使用情况时，总体智能手机屏幕使用时间并未影响身体自尊。我们的研究结果强调了多因素机制，该机制阐明了社交媒体和智能手机活动对女性青少年身体自尊的负面影响，这些青少年在发育过程中容易出现身体自尊低下的情况。
