Appearance-focused Social Media Use, Unrealistic Beauty Ideals, and Body Image Dissatisfaction
Appearance-focused Social Media Use, Unrealistic Beauty Ideals, and Body Image Dissatisfaction

Summary/Abstract: In this article, I cumulate previous research findings indicating that social media articulates appearance pressures, thin-ideal internalization, and beauty ideals. I contribute to the literature on unrealistic beauty ideals configured by social media by showing that thin-ideal and attractiveness internalization and appearance comparison lead to body dissatisfaction. Throughout January 2022, I performed a quantitative literature review of the Web of Science, Scopus, and ProQuest databases, with search terms including “appearance-focused social media use” + “unrealistic beauty ideals,” “body image dissatisfaction,” and “social comparison processes.” As I inspected research published between 2021 and 2022, only 162 articles satisfied the eligibility criteria. By eliminating controversial findings, outcomes unsubstantiated by replication, too imprecise material, or having similar titles, I decided upon 29, generally empirical, sources. Data visualization tools: Dimensions (bibliometric mapping) and VOSviewer (layout algorithms). Reporting quality assessment tool: PRISMA. Methodological quality assessment tools include: AXIS, Dedoose, ROBIS, and SRDR.

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