Instagram Etiquette

The depiction of the female ideal on Instagram encourages unrealistic beauty standards which ultimately lead to a negative body image. A study which examined negative body image among women ages 18-25 reported half of the participants say they would prefer to be run over by a truck than be fat, and 2/3 who would rather be mean or stupid than fat (Klein, 2013). Instagram is amplifying body dissatisfaction among women and negatively altering their self- perception. Social media is a platform where users generate their own content, and because of this women have a responsibility to stop posting or reposting retouched images that encourage unrealistic beauty standards.
The unrealistic beauty standards promoted by social media platforms that are predominately visual such as Instagram and facebook have been correlated to the rise of serious eating disorders (Klein, 2013). Girls and women seek use these platforms to find images of what they want to look like which leads them compare their own bodies to what they see on the pages, thin beautiful models and celebrities. They become dissatisfied with their own bodies, which leads to increased body surveillance, disordered thinking and potentially disordered eating (Klein, 2013). The consequences of anorexia nervosa and bulimia are life threatening. Brown and Tiggemann, (20160 in their study, Attractive celebrity and peer images on Instagram: Effect on women's mood and body image found that exposure to peer images had a similarly negative effect. They compared exposure to to celebrity and peer images to exposure to travel images
and found the former increased negative mood and body dissatisfaction relative to travel images.
An overview of research on social media and body image by Fardouly and Vartanian, (2016) found consistency in the association between social media and body image concerns and also that these associations strengthened overtime. The recommended more research on social media platforms such as Instagram as much of the research to date has focused on Facebook. This is important as Instagram is nearly exclusively image based and has become more popular among females than other social media platforms. I myself have found that when I am spending a lot of time on this platform I engage in body and beauty comparisons and begin to feel more negatively about myself. Fardouly and Vartanian, (2016) recommended body image literacy programs to address the negative impact social media is having on body image.

While I agree that these literacy programs are an important step I think we all have a responsibility to be more aware of this negative impact and use our own content to combat this issue. Woman should focus on posting content that is unrelated to their appearance and all social media users should put efforts towards showing real, unedited and perfectly flawed images of woman. Socially responsible posting and media awareness are a way society can prevent unhealthy relationships between a woman, her body and her social media network.

References:
Brown, Z., & Tiggemann, M. (2016). Attractive celebrity and peer images on Instagram: Effect on women's mood and body image. Body image, 19, 37-43.


Fardouly, J., & Vartanian, L. R. (2016). Social media and body image concerns: Current research and future directions. Current opinion in psychology, 9, 1-5.

Klein, Kendyl M., "Why Don't I Look Like Her? The Impact of Social Media on Female Body Image" (2013). CMC Senior Theses. 720.