Social Media’s Impact on Self-perception (2023)

Undergraduate: Gabi Smith

Faculty Advisor: Patrick Harrison
Department: Psychology & Neuroscience

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Social media has many impacts on our lives, including when we think about how it affects our self-perception. This study looks at the impact social media addiction, relevance of social media content, and type of engagement has on someone’s self-perception. Participants (N = 103) were asked to complete a survey to indicate how addicted they were to social media, the way they engaged with social media, whether or not they felt their content was relevant to them, and how negatively or positively they viewed themselves. We hypothesized that being addicted to social media, viewing content that is relevant to the user, and actively engaging with the content would negatively impact self-perception. Our results showed that social media addiction was negatively associated with self-perception. Additionally, no significant interactions were found between the relevance of social media content, type of engagement, and self-perception. Given these findings, social media is considered a negative tool for someone’s self-perception and overall well-being. Thus, we conclude that individuals should focus on decreasing their use of social media so that they don’t feel the need to compare themselves to others. Our findings add to the growing body of literature on the impact of social media.

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