The Mechanism of Social Media’s Impact on Women’s Body Image Concern

Jiayi Li

2025

Abstract

With digital media promoting perfect persona and perfect body image, social media influencers have been causing anxiety and psychological stress among users. Existing studies have shown that the body image concern that social media cause may lead to various mental health issues for individuals, ranging from eating disorder to depression. This research aims to review the impact of social media on women’s body image, and the mechanism behind. Through 3 different ways: self-objectification, social comparison, and unification of aesthetics, social media cause a negative impact on women’s body image and cause physical and mental health issues eventually. Women would treat themselves as objects to be gazed at by others in the self-objectification situation. Also, social media reinforces the fallacy that only perfection reflects one's value through the feedback mechanism of likes, promoting single value and causing social comparison. The research also gave some suggestions based on each mechanism, to buffer the negative effect of social media.

Paper Citation

in Harvard Style

Li J. (2025). The Mechanism of Social Media’s Impact on Women’s Body Image Concern. In Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Politics, Law, and Social Science - Volume 1: ICPLSS; ISBN 978-989-758-785-6, SciTePress, pages 630-633. DOI: 10.5220/0014395000004859

in Bibtex Style

@conference{icplss25,
author={Jiayi Li},
title={The Mechanism of Social Media’s Impact on Women’s Body Image Concern},
booktitle={Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Politics, Law, and Social Science - Volume 1: ICPLSS},
year={2025},
pages={630-633},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0014395000004859},
isbn={978-989-758-785-6},
}

in EndNote Style

TY - CONF

JO - Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Politics, Law, and Social Science - Volume 1: ICPLSS
TI - The Mechanism of Social Media’s Impact on Women’s Body Image Concern
SN - 978-989-758-785-6
AU - Li J.
PY - 2025
SP - 630
EP - 633
DO - 10.5220/0014395000004859
PB - SciTePress