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Volume 3 Supplement 1

Proceedings of the 2015 Australia and New Zealand Academy for Eating Disorders (ANZAED) Conference: Riding the Waves to Recovery

Selfies and social media: relationships between self-image editing and photo-investment and body dissatisfaction and dietary restraint

Journal of Eating Disorders volume 3, Article number: O21 (2015) Cite this article

Engagement with social media, such as Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat, may lead to negative outcomes for body dissatisfaction and disordered eating due to the appearance focused nature of the online interactions. The aim of this cross-sectional study was to examine relationships between social media photo-related activities and overvaluation of shape and weight, body dissatisfaction, and dietary restraint in adolescent girls. Participants were 101 year 7 girls (Mage = 13.1, SD = 0.3) who completed measures of social media use and body image and disordered eating via self-report. Significantly higher levels of overvaluation of shape and weight, body dissatisfaction, dietary restraint, and internalisation of the thin ideal were found for participants who regularly shared self-images on social media, compared with those who were not regular sharers. In addition, after controlling for media exposure and internalisation of the thin ideal, higher engagement in manipulation of self-images and greater investment in the self-images prior to sharing were associated with greater overvaluation of shape and weight, body dissatisfaction, and dietary restraint. Findings suggest that self-image related social media activities may contribute to body dissatisfaction and disordered eating and indicate important contemporary targets for social media based intervention for these problems.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Psychology and Public Health, La Trobe University, Australia

    Siân A McLean, Susan J Paxton & Eleanor H Wertheim

  2. School of Education, La Trobe University, Australia

    Jennifer Masters

Authors
  1. Siân A McLean
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  2. Susan J Paxton
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  3. Eleanor H Wertheim
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  4. Jennifer Masters
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Siân A McLean.

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This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.

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McLean, S.A., Paxton, S.J., Wertheim, E.H. et al. Selfies and social media: relationships between self-image editing and photo-investment and body dissatisfaction and dietary restraint. J Eat Disord 3 (Suppl 1), O21 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1186/2050-2974-3-S1-O21

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1186/2050-2974-3-S1-O21

Keywords

  • Public Health
  • Health Promotion
  • Disease Prevention
  • Body Image
  • Social Medium

Journal of Eating Disorders

ISSN: 2050-2974