Young people who spend a lot of time comparing their bodies and faces to others on the internet often continue to have high levels of these appearance concerns into their teens and young adults. People who are less involved in social media tend to initially have lower levels of concern for their appearance, but over time their concern increases until almost all young people share a similar burden. These patterns are detailed in a recent study published in the journal Psychology of Popular Media.
The visual nature of the modern internet has produced a constant stream of idealized images. From heavily edited photos of friends to carefully selected videos of celebrities, young people are faced with a plethora of content that prompts them to evaluate their appearance. This behavior is called online appearance obsession.
Preoccupation with online appearance involves frequently comparing one’s physical characteristics to people perceived to be more attractive. This includes spending too much time managing your own digital self-presentation. This may mean checking your photos repeatedly, using filters to hide perceived flaws, and constantly seeking validation through likes and comments.
Previous research has linked this digital obsession to a number of mental health issues. Symptoms of depression, social anxiety, and eating disorders tend to be higher among people who value their online presence. Researchers wanted to know how these thought patterns evolve as teenagers grow into adults.
An important goal was to identify whether underlying emotional conflicts or existing social media habits shape the trajectory of concerns about a person’s digital appearance. Most previous studies on this topic have only taken one snapshot in time. Snapshots cannot reveal whether teenagers’ intense interest in online aesthetics will fade or become a permanent fixture in the adult psyche.
To answer these questions, Melanie J. Zimmer Genbeck, a psychology researcher at Griffith University, led a study that followed the same group of young people over five years. Zimmer Genbeck and colleagues sought to understand how gender, mental health, and technology habits influence the occurrence of appearance concerns. They also wanted to know whether certain groups of young people were more vulnerable to increased anxiety than others.
Researchers recruited 565 Australian students for the project. Participants were between 13 and 22 years old when data collection began. Approximately 60% of participants were young women and 40% were young men. Adolescents and young adults completed three comprehensive surveys conducted over a five-year period.
At each stage of the survey, students answered questions about their social media habits and mental health. They rated how strongly they agreed with statements assessing the frequency of daily social media use. Participants also completed a questionnaire designed to identify symptoms of social anxiety, such as fear of negative evaluation from peers.
Other sections of the survey measured depressive emotions such as persistent loneliness and sadness. To quantify online preoccupation with appearance, young people reported the extent to which their feelings about their bodies were influenced by photos posted online by others. They also showed how much effort they put into their own online appearances.
Looking at the baseline data collected in the first year, certain patterns quickly became apparent. Young women reported more concern for their online appearance than young men. Higher levels of digital interest were also closely related to intense social media use among all participants. Participants who reported more depressive symptoms and higher social anxiety scores in the first survey also showed intense focus on digital presentations.
When researchers analyzed data spanning five full years, two distinct trajectories of change over time emerged. For participants who initially expressed high concern for their online appearance, that concern remained steadily increasing as the year progressed. This highly engaged group consisted primarily of young women, avid social media users, and people with high baseline scores for anxiety and depression.
Their focus on digital aesthetics never faded as they matured. Rather, high levels of digital body anxiety appear to be a stable trait for young people who are already grappling with mental health issues and heavy internet use. Their interests remained consistent from late adolescence to early adulthood.
A very different pattern emerged among participants who began the study with relatively little concern about their digital appearance. This group initially included many young men and individuals who used social media infrequently. Over the five-year follow-up period, this group, who initially didn’t care, steadily increased their interest in their online appearance.
As these young people progressed through adolescence and into adulthood, their interest in digital comparisons increased. Their efforts to curate the perfect online image steadily increased to match the habits of their highly obsessed peers. The researchers noted that this narrowed the disparity between population groups.
Ultimately, the two different trajectories meant that nearly all participants converged on a similar mindset. Young people who started with low interest steadily caught up with those who started with high interest. By the end of the study, the majority of participants reported moderate to high preoccupation with online appearance.
This behavior became almost universal across the sample. It did not matter whether the participants were male or female or whether they began the follow-up period in a fully mental state. Moderate levels of online preoccupation with appearance only became a typical experience by late adolescence.
Although gender differences existed initially, the actual pace of change did not vary significantly by gender. Young men started with a lower baseline than young women, but their anxiety increased at a similar rate over time. This suggests that young men are not immune to digital image anxiety, either.
Psychologists believe that the social pressures placed on young women may cause the early onset of appearance anxiety. Young women are frequently exposed to cultural messages that directly link their personal worth to physical beauty. For young men, similar pressures regarding muscularity and appearance appear to emerge a little later in social development.
The same principle applies to mental health and technology habits. High levels of social media use and psychological distress at the beginning of the study reliably predicted who would develop the most appearance concerns. However, online appearance anxiety increased most rapidly with age among young people with the lowest initial risk factors.
The findings clearly demonstrate how appearance concerns develop over time. The researchers acknowledged that their approach had some limitations. The last data collection point coincided with the peak of the global pandemic after a three-year gap. The unique social constraints of the time may have had a significant impact on how participants engaged with the Internet.
Tracking youth at only three specific time points also exceeded the limitations of the researchers. This made it impossible to detect mild or temporary fluctuations in the data. With more frequent surveys, scientists might have been able to see whether appearance anxiety increases or decreases based on specific life events.
This study also focuses on the general frequency of social media use rather than specific features of social media. Different digital elements can shape appearance insecurities in different ways. Focusing on interactive features such as number of followers or exposure to specific aesthetic filters could yield more detailed results in future projects.
The demographic composition of the participants also had limitations. The sample consisted primarily of teenagers of Caucasian European descent living in specific regions of Australia. The trajectories observed in this group may not fully reflect the experiences of youth from other cultural backgrounds or geographic locations.
Future projects could track these digital behaviors from an even younger age to catch early signs of anxiety. The researchers hope to directly measure body dissatisfaction and internet habits to see how the two interact in early childhood. It would also be useful to test the relationship in reverse by investigating whether early Internet interest actually causes the development of clinical depression.
Understanding when these digital concerns first escalate could help psychologists build better prevention tools. Early intervention could teach children how to deal with completely fabricated beauty standards before they damage their self-image. To protect the mental health of young internet users, they need to know exactly when their relationship with digital media is deteriorating.
The study, “Online Appearance Preoccupation After Adolescence: A Longitudinal Study of Social Media Use, Anxiety, and Depression as Correlates of Growth and Stability,” was authored by Melanie J. Zimmer Genbeck, Veya Seakis, and Amanda L. Duffy.
