Media Literacy Education and Body Image (2008)
Undergraduate: Crista Cuccaro
Faculty Advisor: Andrew Perrin
Department: Sociology
Media depictions of an ideal beauty standard have harmful consequences for the health of women and young girls. One consequence has been the rise in prevalence of eating disorders and unhealthy dieting behaviors of females in the United States. These dieting behaviors have been recognized in very young girls, causing alarm among both parents and health care professionals.
Through teaching skills to critically analyze media, media literacy education has been introduced as a solution to ameliorate the effects of harmful media messages on youth. The objective of this exploratory study is to determine the efficacy of media literacy education in improving girls’ attitudes toward body image.
Participants consisted of 20 girls enrolled in a sixth grade class at a public school in North Carolina. Participants were randomly assigned to a control or intervention group The intervention group was taught a standardized media literacy lesson adapted from the Center for Media Literacy. Pre- and post-intervention data were collected using an investigator developed interview. It was hypothesized that there would be an improvement in the participants’ attitudes about body image after receiving the media literacy lesson.
Analysis of the data showed little change in the intervention group. This lack of change may be the result of the brevity of the intervention. This suggests that further work be directed at investigating media literacy education as a long term process.