Psychology Commons^™

Effects Of Social Media And Smartphone Use On Body Esteem In Female Adolescents: Testing A Cognitive And Affective Model, Hwajin Yang, Jiaqi Joy Wang, Yue Qi Germaine Tng, Sujin Yang

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

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 (N = …