"Why can't I look like that?" Reducing the Impact of Mass and Social Media on College Women's Body Image: An Assessment of the Short-term and Long-term Effects of a Video Intervention

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine the impact of an educational video intervention centered on social comparison and unrealistic body standards on the affect, body image, and eating disorder symptoms of female college students in the short- and long-term. Experiment 1 studied this with regard to mass media exposure while Experiment 2 studied this with regard to social media exposure, an area that had not yet been the focus of such an intervention. In both experiments, female undergraduates (N=207, N=191) were exposed to either an intervention video or control video before viewing either mass media photos of idealized female bodies or images on their own Facebook accounts. Results indicated that participants who viewed mass media photos after the video intervention, compared to those who viewed the control video, presented significantly fewer eating disorder symptoms in the short-term but not the long-term and did not significantly differ at any time in affect or body image. Participants who viewed photos on their own Facebook accounts after the video intervention did not significantly differ on any of the measures in the short- or long-term, perhaps because of the lower impact of social media images. Implications and future paths for research are discussed.