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Sheikh, Arzoo (2023) Instagram unfiltered: how young women who self-identify as body-dissatisfied experience Instagram : an interpretative phenomenological analysis. Doctoral thesis, London Metropolitan University.
Background and aim:
The media have been widely recognised as influencing an individual's body image (BI) and contributing to body dissatisfaction (BD). With the rise of social networking sites (SNSs), including the increasingly popular image-based platform Instagram, women have been shown to experience self-objectification, anxiety, and low mood, among other negative psychological outcomes. Uncertainties lie in whether women with pre-existing BD experience increased feelings of BD while using Instagram. It is imperative to study Instagram further to move towards a deeper understanding of the recent phenomenon on an individual's mental health. The present study aims to investigate this knowledge gap and uncover how young women aged 18-25 experience using Instagram with pre-existing BD.
Method:
An interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) was chosen for this research and included six women, aged 18-25, with self-identified BD.
Findings:
Three superordinate themes emerged: a) A Defeating Parallel Reality, b) The Fast and Pretty Instagram Pill, and c) Motivations behind Instagram use. The findings revealed that using Instagram led to young women internalising the unrealistic representations of beauty on Instagram and comparing themselves to other users. This exacerbated their BD and led to an internal conflict between their real self and their (false) online self. The rapid absorption of the images on Instagram was seen as one of the primary causes of their negative psychological outcomes. Practitioners could use an integrated treatment approach that considers both the external physical experience and the internal subjective experience of being in and having a body and how these are intertwined with self-worth when working with body-dissatisfied individuals.
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