The Female Body Images On Instagram And How It Affects Italian College Age Women

Social media has become increasingly popular over the past few years and has established a presence in global culture.Thus,the purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between regular social media use and people’s perceptions of their bodies in respect to social media messages and photographs.This is with the view of establishing whether a causal relationship exists between social media usage and people’s perception of their body.The continuous usage of social media is presumed to affect the perception of one’s body and possibly leading to body dissatisfaction.In order to ascertain the presumption,the research gathered information from female residents of Italy on their perceptions of their body image.Thus,a mixed method approach was adopted.Participation in the survey was completely voluntary and respondents’ identity were kept anonymous.The selected participants were females of over 18 years of age and attending an Italian University.The research and data were used to evaluate how social media affect Italian women’s perception of their bodies.The research and data collection considered how the consistent usage of Instagram shaped participants assessment of their bodies.