This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: Viewing "thinspiration" content on TikTok increases self-objectification and worsens mood, while viewing body-positive content also increases self-objectification but is linked to a more positive mood, according to a new study published in PLOS One by Samantha Jones of Western University, Canada, and colleagues. Self-objectification occurs when people feel their value is determined by their appearance, viewing themselves and their bodies as objects.
Appearance-focused social media content includes thinspiration, which depicts a thin ideal and promotes weight loss; fitspiration, which contains fat-loss-promoting messages; and body positivity content, which promotes body acceptance and challenges thin and fit ideals. Recently, researchers have questioned the beneficial nature of body positivity content, as well as the overall associations between self-objectification and mood. In the new study, researchers recruited 323 women and feminine-identifying people who reported their general disposition to self-objectify before watching a randomized set of 20 TikTok videos spanning five categories: thinspiration, fitspiration, body positivity, general positive and neutral.
After each video, participants reported their self-objectification and mood levels. Compared with watching positive videos, self-objectification was highest after viewing thinspiration (B = 1.24), followed by body-positive (B = 0.98) and fitspiration (B = 0.43) content. Thinspiration and fitspiration were both associated with increased negative mood and decreased positive mood compared with neutral videos.
Body-positive content, on the other hand, was associated with increased positive mood. Greater self-objectification after viewing body-positive content strengthened this positive mood effect (B = 6.49). The study measured only momentary effects of viewing videos, so it cannot determine longer-term effects, and participants did not complete a baseline mood or self-objectification measure before viewing videos.
The sample was young and consisted largely of women of average body size, limiting generalizability. However, the researchers conclude that appearance-focused social media content broadly increases self-objectification, but this is not always associated with negative outcomes. Future research could probe how to lessen the effects of thinspiration and fitspiration on mood, they say, especially for those with a high tendency to self-objectify.
The authors add, "We found that women experienced negative emotions when viewing social media videos that idealize thinness. Women who tend to value their appearance over their other qualities were especially vulnerable to negative mood after viewing thin-ideal videos. However, in the moment, these same appearance-focused thoughts may serve to boost mood when women engage with body-positive videos." "Presenting videos to participants in a randomized order and investigating each video's impact on mood allowed us to disentangle the effect that different forms of content have on women's mood while viewing videos from TikTok." "Unpredictable exposure to a variety of TikTok videos can elicit shifts in both thinking and feeling in the moment." Jones SM, et al.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
