Social media use and weight bias internalization: association moderated by age and weight perception

The current study examined whether weight perception or age moderated associations between time spent on image-based social media and weight bias internalization (WBI).

Data come from the baseline visit of the Tracking Our Lives Study, a randomized control trial of college women (n = 200). Participants completed questionnaires assessing time spent on social media (continuous, overall and individual platforms Instagram, Facebook, and Snapchat), WBI (continuous), weight perception (perceive their weight as “overweight” vs. do not perceive their weight as “overweight”), age (continuous, 18–49 years), and confounders (race/ethnicity, parent education, sexual orientation, and BMI). Adjusted zero-inflated Poisson regressions were performed to determine if weight perception and age moderated associations between time spent on image-based social media and WBI.

As expected, we found a positive association between overall time spent on image-based social media and WBI (β = 0.826, p < 0.001). In moderation analyses, the strength of the association was weakened among women who perceived their weight as “overweight” (β=-0.018, p = 0.006). Associations also weakened with age (β=-0.001, p < 0.001). The association between time spent on Instagram and WBI was also weakened with age (β=-0.014, p = 0.018), which was the only significant moderation found for individual social media platforms.

Our results suggest that image-based social media use is more strongly associated with increases in WBI among younger women.