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In a world where social media often promotes unrealistic beauty ideals, a new era is dawning. These platforms, once sources of body dissatisfaction, now have the potential to uplift women and help them feel great about their own bodies.
In today’s world, it’s hard to imagine life without social media. Despite being aware of its pitfalls, we often find ourselves exposed to content beyond our control. Social media platforms offer a wide range of functions, from delivering news and sports updates to facilitating shopping and entertainment. Avoiding its influence can be a challenge due to its pervasive nature. Given these circumstances, there is a pressing need to prioritise making social media a healthier space.
Researchers worldwide have conducted intriguing experiments involving young women aged 18–30, immersing them in a diverse array of images and short videos on social media. These captivating visuals have portrayed realistic female bodies alongside the power of digital enhancement to create unrealistic standards. From unfiltered depictions of skin conditions in influencer videos to revealing comparisons of celebrities with and without makeup and filters, the experiments delved deep into reshaping perceptions of beauty.
Now, it’s time to examine how these experiments influenced the perceptions of young women.
Adding a touch of humour, parody images showcased average women playfully mimicking celebrities, offering a refreshing take on body image. The exploration continued with videos displaying lingerie on various body types, diverse skin tones, and races, challenging conventional beauty ideals. Some videos also highlighted workplace appearance bias.
Now, it’s time to examine how these experiments influenced the perceptions of young women. Social scientists have studied many variables over the past decade. Researchers measured these variables using validated scales on young women before exposing them to various images and short videos, and immediately after viewing them. This approach provided concrete results on the impact of viewing such images and videos, leading to clear conclusions.
Researchers included variables likemood, body acceptance, self-esteem in the experimental designs. This is how simple scientific measures can help us understand which images and videos have a positive or negative effect, or no impact.
Beauty advertising companies must take responsibility for the images they promote. While some images appear body-positive, they may still encourage unhealthy self-objectification if sexualized. Recent experiments have revealed the negative impact of such imagery, underscoring the need to test the content before its release on social media ads. Policymakers can now use these findings to set new standards.
As part of Mehruba Shabaab Haque‘s PhD research, she aims to address the issue of unrealistic beauty standards and their impact on young girls, a demographic largely absent from previous studies. Her goal is to engage with young girls directly, understanding their perspectives on body image, and then collaborate with the influencers they follow. Together, they will create positive, realistic social media content that promotes a healthier view of beauty. By educating children from a young age about realistic standards of beauty, she hopes to shift the narrative and reduce the negative influence of idealised, unattainable body images.
The pervasive reach of social media now encompasses children, a crucial stage in the development of body image and self-esteem. Social media wields a significant influence, with influencers playing a central role in shaping perceptions. These influencers have a significant control over the online content young people see and believe. Given their powerful position in shaping thoughts, they must collaborate with influencers to ensure they are promoting realistic and positive images, especially to their young followers.
Through her research, she aims to contribute to the movement for influencers to use their platforms responsibly, especially when engaging with children and future generations. She will share her findings with policymakers, who can then create guidelines to ensure influencers promote positive self-image and well-being. This will help foster a world where we can cultivate hope for happiness on platforms that currently may contribute to negative body image perceptions.
Read more about her latest research HERE.
Author of this article is Mehruba Shabaab Haque. Editor Jaan-Juhan Oidermaa. Article written for the contest “Science in 3 minutes” organised by Estonian Academy of Sciences and The Estonian Young Academy of Sciences (EYAS). Main sponsor of the competition is Inclusive Financial Technology Foundation.
If this deep dive into social sciences has you craving more insights, scroll over to our next article—where sociology meets psychology, and the plot of human nature thickens! Read more about how University of Tartu Researchers Explore Child Vulnerability in Landmark Publication.
