Adolescents' eating behaviors in the era of social media: The role of social comparison, body satisfaction and need satisfaction

This diary study was designed to measure the day-to-day relations between social comparison due to using social media with dysfunctional eating behaviors, through needs and body satisfaction. Those parameters were hypothesized to fluctuate day by day, and their mean levels across a series of days to be predicted from participants' interpersonal differences in self-esteem, eating disorder symptoms, life satisfaction, and perfectionism. Method: Participants were 127 adolescents (Mage = 16.53 years; SD = 1.18; 70.1% females). and the study was consisted of two parts. In the pre-diary phase, participants' self-esteem, eating disorder symptoms, life satisfaction, and perfectionism were assessed. In the diary phase, which started two weeks after the pre-diary phase, participants reported every second day the daily social comparisons they were engaged during social media use, and their daily need satisfaction, body satisfaction and dysfunctional eating behaviors. Results: Multilevel analyses revealed that all the diary measures fluctuated considerably, and that comparisons with famous people related to dysfunctional eating behaviors through need satisfaction and body satisfaction. Visiting friends' accounts was related to need satisfaction and directly to dysfunctional eating behaviors, which were not found for the famous people. The female sample was also found to have similar relation pathways with the full sample. Participants' eating disorder symptoms were found to predict lower mean levels of daily body satisfaction and higher mean levels of dysfunctional eating behaviors. Discussion: The findings suggested that social comparisons might play a vital role on eating behaviors of adolescents, and by means of needs satisfaction and, in turn, body satisfaction. Eating disorder symptoms affected daily body satisfaction and dysfunctional eating behaviors for the between-person differences. Future interventions targeting at eating behaviors and body satisfaction should consider their dynamic day-by-day fluctuation pattern and the role of social comparisons that adolescents make through social media use on a daily basis.