The effect of social media use on beauty perception and social appearance anxiety: The case of Instagram

The body, which is one of the oldest communication tools known, has the ability to directly affect a person's social life beyond transmitting people's thoughts and feelings. Interpretations in relation to the body are basically a phenomenon as old as the history of humanity. In our period, the body comes to the fore with social media applications, especially with a focus on visuality. The main reason for this is that social media has the power to influence large audiences in a short time. The body is at the very beginning of the items that people can simply display on social media. In addition to many exhibition elements such as zones to visit in everyday life, books to read and meals to eat, the body is located in the most special part of the showcase in the form of a space that can be arranged continuously and timelessly. The media makes publications emphasizing that these bodies are the ideal body by considering sexy, beautiful, tall and thin female models. The desire of people exposed to this to resemble the mentioned ideal figures increases at the same rate. In addition, they consider themselves inadequate. The perception of beauty created on social media platforms reveals the image of the ideal female/male body. In this context, the aim of the study was to examine the effect of Instagram use on beauty perception and social appearance anxiety. Keywords: Social Appearance Anxiety, Social Media, Instagram, Beauty Perception, Body Perception.