Relationship between Body Image Dissatisfaction and Social Media Usage in Young Women

Abstract

Young women have been found to experience body image dissatisfaction as a consequence of excessive social media usage and vice versa. Therefore, the current study was conducted to examine the relationship between body image dissatisfaction and social media use in young women aged 19-23 years in a Pakistani sample. A sample of 401 young women from different cities of Punjab province completed an online Google Form-based questionnaire containing informed consent, demographic sheet, and two scales namely social networking usage scale and socio-cultural attitude towards appearance questionnaire-4 (SATAQ-4). The findings of the study significantly predicted excessive social media usage from body dissatisfaction. The pressure sub scale of body image dissatisfaction was found to be significantly associated with social media usage. There were found no differences in body image dissatisfaction and social media usage in single and married young women. However, urban women were found to have high levels of body image dissatisfaction than rural women. The study concluded that body image dissatisfaction could lead to excessive social media usage in young women. The future directions and limitations of the study were discussed.