Inspiration or instigation? Bidirectional links between body-focused content, body image, and disordered eating urges

Area of Science:

• Psychology
• Media Studies
• Public Health

Background:

• Social media platforms host various body-focused inspirational content.
• Understanding the impact of this content on body image and eating behaviors is crucial.

Purpose of the Study:

• To examine the bidirectional relationship between viewing body-focused inspiration content and body image/eating urges.
• To investigate the moderating effect of gender on these associations.

Main Methods:

• Ecological momentary assessment (EMA) used over seven days with 858 undergraduates.
• Participants reported exposure to thinspiration, fitspiration, and fatspiration content, alongside body image and eating urge variables, six times daily.
• Multilevel analyses were employed to examine the relationships.

Main Results:

• Thinspiration content viewing predicted increased body dissatisfaction.
• Fitspiration content viewing predicted decreased body appreciation.
• Fatspiration content viewing predicted increased urges to exercise.
• Higher body objectification predicted less thinspiration content viewing.
• Gender did not moderate the momentary relationships.

Conclusions:

• The relationship between body-focused content and body/eating outcomes is complex and not uniformly bidirectional.
• Active management of social media use may be a practical strategy to mitigate potential harm.
• Future research should explore other moderators like internalized attitudes and cumulative exposure effects.