The Impact Of Social Media Use On Self-objectification Of Female College Students

As a powerful tool for transmitting social culture,the content about the female body presented in the media affects the way women perceive their bodies,making them examine their bodies from the perspective of a third party and pay attention to "how they look" rather than "how they feel",that is,self-objectification.Self-objectification is a concept developed based on the theory of sexual objectification.It refers to the phenomenon that an individual internalizes such values and examines his own body from the perspective of a third party in the sexual objectification environment that pays too much attention to the external performance of the female body for a long time.In media criticism and media effect research,there are outstanding achievements in self-objectification.However,previous studies primarily focused on the influence of traditional media,and few focused on the role of social media.Moreover,when studying social media,they mainly focused on female users’ information-receiving behaviour on social media.Few subdivided female users’ media use behaviour,let alone did not subdivide sexual objectification information according to the subject.This study was divided into two parts by absorbing the experience and results of previous studies.In the first study,525 female college students were surveyed by questionnaires to understand their use of social media and their exposure to genderobjectifying information in the process of using social media.The relationship between the intensity of social media use,information acquisition,self-presentation and online interaction on the level of self-objectifying of female college students was concluded.In study 2,28 female college students were selected for in-depth interviews based on study1 to understand the specific mechanisms of the influence of three different social media use behaviours,namely information acquisition,self-presentation and online interaction,on the process of self-objectification.The research proves that the intensity of social media use,information acquisition and self-presentation are significantly positively correlated with the level of selfobjectification of female college students,information acquisition and self-presentation can predict the status of self-objectification of female college students,and online interaction is positively correlated with the level of self-objectification of female college students but not so significantly.The regression analysis can not predict the status of the self-objectification of subjects.The primary function of information acquisition behaviour is to provide female college students with physical appearance standards,convey the importance of physical attractiveness to them,and provide concrete learning channels.Among them,although female college students recognize the physical beauty of celebrities,the degree of internalization is low.On the contrary,they show a higher tendency to internalize the concept of the physical appearance of Internet celebrities.The degree of recognition and internalization of their peers’ standards of physical appearance could be higher.To be recognized by others,female college students will examine their physical appearance from the perspective of others and hope to present a body image that others can identify during self-presentation.The significance of interaction is to strengthen the female college students’ physical appearance of "conforming to the standard social body concept" to be more recognized by others,resulting in the female college students enhancing their body examination and the internalization of the standard social body concept to obtain the recognition of others.At the end of the study,this paper gives some suggestions based on the research results,hoping to provide practical ways to alleviate the self-objectification of female college students,help female college students establish a correct understanding of their bodies,and ensure their physical and mental health development.