Body Image Perception among Young Female Adults: An Instagram Analysis

Event Center BC

Objective: Evaluate the use of social media tool, Instagram, to assess body image perception among young adults. Methods: The first 10 photos that were available on the explore posts page were collected. The same data collection and analysis procedure was repeated two weeks apart to obtain a total of 20 photos. Each photo was analyzed for its content to evaluate the main purpose and theme of the hashtags. To evaluate emergent themes, open and axial coding were utilized. Results: The more followers a user had on Instagram, the less hashtags were used to describe the photo, and the fewer followers a user had, the more hashtags were used to describe a photo. Three emergent themes were identified: expectations or idolization, encouragement, and product promotion. Conclusion: We provide one of the first insights into the use of Instagram on healthrelated outcomes; specifically, the prevalence of body image-related hashtags. Public health professionals can utilize the trending hashtags identified in this study to reach a large population of young adults to provide encouragement for weight loss and body positivity, in turn expanding the scope of health education delivery methods.