Social Media Usage and Body Image Issues in Indian Adolescents

Maanya Falod and Khyati Talwar

ABSTRACT 

Social media is now one of the prime platforms used for communication by teens and plays an indispensable role in their lives. There is abundance of evidence to suggest that excessive use of social media leads to many problems, such as cyberbullying and risky behavior among adolescents. There have been a lot of concerns regarding the promotion of unrealistic body image on social media. Body dissatisfaction is experienced when one holds negative thoughts about one’s body and thinks they have failed to meet the standards of the society. This study assesses the correlation between body image and social media usage and also examines if females' and males’ body image issues are affected equally by the negative impact of social media. The data was gathered from high school students who belonged to the age group of 15-18 years. The study consisted of a convenience sample of 57 Indian participants from Jaipur, Rajasthan. The study used two standardized scales- the Social Media Engagement Scale for Adolescents (Ni et al., 2020) and the Adolescent Body Image Satisfaction Scale (Leone et al., 2014). The correlation analyses revealed that there is no significant correlation between Social Media Engagement Scale and Body Image Satisfaction in both males and females (r = 0.108; p<0.01).

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