Impact of Social Media Addiction on Body Self Image Perception of Young Adult

The growing influence of social media is subtly reshaping young adults’ perceptions of their body self, often leading to an altered sense of self-worth. The purpose of this study was to explore how social media addiction affect the body self image of young adult. The data was randomly collected from various institution of Nainital district of Uttarakhand. The data comprise of 240 young adults from diverse academic disciplines assessing various dimensions of body self-image perceptions, consisted of 120 individual of social media addiction (high social media addiction and low social media addiction). Subsequently divided into further two categories based on gender (male and female), each with 60 participants. The Social Media Addiction Scale (SMAS), developed by Ünal and Deniz (2015) and Body Self Image Questionnaire developed by Rowe (1999) was administered. For statistical analysis a two-way ANOVA was used by SPSS. The results of the study revealed significant differences at 0.05 level between high and low social media-addicted individuals across several dimensions of body image perception, including Overall Appearance Evaluation, Health Fitness Influence, Health Fitness Evaluation, Attention to Grooming, Height Dissatisfaction, Fitness Evaluation, Negative Affect, and Social Dependence. However, no significant difference was observed at the 0.05 level in the Investment in Ideals dimension. Additionally, gender-based analysis indicated significant differences at the 0.05 level in Overall Appearance Evaluation, Investment in Ideals, Health Fitness Evaluation, Negative Affect, and Social Dependence. Lastly, no significant differences at 0.05 were found in other of body image perception with respect to gender.