Not satisfied with your body because of social media
A warm relationship with your mother can help
We know that adolescents who spend a lot of time on social media often feel less satisfied with their body. They experience pressure to look ‘perfect‘ on social media and carefully select the photos they post. A new study by Dian de Vries, Helen Vossen and Paulien van der Kolk-van der Boom shows that this is not always the case. When adolescents have a warm relationship with their mother, they do not become less satisfied with their body as a result of social media use. Having a warm bond with their father did not have an influence. For this study 440 adolescents filled in a questionnaire about social media use, body dissatisfaction and parent-adolescents relationships. “These results suggest that mothers can have a protective role in the negative effects of social media” says Helen Vossen.
Ref: de Vries, D.A., Vossen, H.G.M. & van der Kolk – van der Boom, P. (2018) Social media and body dissatisfaction: Investigating the attenuating role of positive parent-adolescent relationships. Journal of Youth and Adolescence (2018). Online first. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-018-0956-9