An Investigation on the Relationship Between Celebrities’ Ideal Body Images on Social Media and Young Generation’s Body Dissatisfaction

Abstract

The current research was conducted to examine whether celebrities on social media intensify body dissatisfaction of the young generation or not. Young people aged from 18 to 24 years old from the top three cities in South, North, and East China were investigated by a survey experiment. Unlike previous studies, my finding took both behaviors and mental states into consideration when drawing conclusions on the degree of body dissatisfaction. This research demonstrated that both sexes became more unsatisfied with their bodies mentally. In addition, surprising results about the impacts of body dissatisfaction on specific body parts dissatisfaction between sex were discovered. The outcome showed, comparing to other body parts, females disliked their shoulders and chests more, while males disliked their thighs and stomachs more, being the opposite to the stereotypes. Nonetheless, only males would alternate their behaviors, such as exercising, to cope with the dissatisfaction. Thus, counterintuitively, ideal body images did not harm people's healths physically. It is convincing to deduce that reducing exposure of ideal body images is incapable of relieving body anxiety and physical health problems like eating disorders.