Sociala medier -­ Ett osunt samhällsfenomen : En kvantitativ sociologisk studie om Facebook och Instagrams exponering på kvinnors kroppsuppfattning

Sammanfattning: The aim of this study is to examine if social media has a negative impact on how womenperceive their own body image. The study was conducted by a quantitative survey usingquestionnaires to examine the various factors that affect the perceived body image. Such ashow women socially compare themselves with others or how satisfied they are with theirbody depending on how much time they spend on social media. We will also investigate ifwomen’s perceived body image is consistent with the their actual body based upon theirBMI. The sample for the study consisted of 159 women who are members of a specificFacebook group. The material was analyzed with support from Festinger’s theory of socialcomparison and Cooley’s glass-self theory among others. The results show that high use ofsocial media affects women’s satisfaction with how they look negatively compared withthose who use social media to a low degree. It also shows that women who spend a lot oftime on social media tend to compare themselves with other more widely and tend to beunhappier with their body. On the other hand, we could not see any correlation between theuse of social media and women’s perception of their actual body.