More social media is not automatically bad for body image in teens

Embargoed until: Publicly released: 2025-12-02 03:00

International

Photo by Vitaly Gariev on Unsplash

If your teen spends more time on social media, they may not necessarily develop body issues, according to international researchers who looked at social media use on smartphones. The team collected usage data with a screening app that ran in the background of the smartphones of 155 teen volunteers aged 13-17. Combining over 217,000 hours of android smartphone data with 769 survey reports of weight concerns and dieting, the team found the time spent on social media did not seem to influence body-image related factors, such as weight concerns and dieting.

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Journal/
conference: JAMA Pediatrics

Research:Paper

Organisation/s: University of Minnesota, USA

Funder: This research was supported in part by grant R01MH138929 from the NIMH (Dr Sun); grant R01HL169601 from the NHLBI (Drs Robinson, Ram, and Reeves); and funding from the Stanford Maternal and Child Health Research Institute, the Department of Pediatrics at Stanford University, the University of Minnesota Grant-in-Aid of Research, Artistry, and Scholarship Program, and the Department of Family Social Science at University of Minnesota—Twin Cities. Conflict of Interest Disclosures: Dr Sun reported receiving grants from the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH); the Stanford Maternal and Child Health Research Institute; and the University of Minnesota Grant-in-Aid of Research, Artistry, and Scholarship Program and institutional research support from the Department of Family Social Science at University of Minnesota—Twin Cities during the conduct of the study. Dr Robinson reported receiving grants from the National Heart, Lung & Blood Institute (NHLBI) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), grants from the Stanford Maternal and Child Health Institute at Stanford University, and institutional research support from The Department of Pediatrics at Stanford University during the conduct of the study and grants from the National Institute of Diabetes, Digestive and Kidney Diseases of the NIH outside the submittedwork. No other disclosures were reported.

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