Impact on women's body satisfaction of exposure to postpartum imagery on social media

Megan L Gow ^1,2* Maddison Henderson ¹ Amanda Henry ^2,3 Lynne Margaret Roberts ^2,3 Heike Roth ^3,4

• ¹ The University of Sydney, Darlington, Australia
• ² University of New South Wales, Kensington, New South Wales, Australia
• ³ St George Hospital, Kogarah, New South Wales, Australia
• ⁴ University of Technology Sydney, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

Background:Social networking sites may be a convenient, accessible and low-cost option for delivering health information at scale to postpartum women. However, social media use is associated with decreased body satisfaction and may contribute to psychological ill-health. Our study aimed to determine whether exposure to body-focused imagery, typical of imagery targeting postpartum women on Instagram, is associated with a reduction in state body satisfaction and state body appreciation. Secondly, we aimed to determine whether including postpartum-health-focused imagery, in conjunction with body-focused imagery, is associated with improving state body satisfaction/appreciation, compared with no postpartum health content.Methods:A single blinded quasi-experimental survey study, recruiting women who had given birth in the previous 2-years, asked participants about key demographic information, social media use and assessed thin-ideal internalization and media appearance pressures using validated tools. Participants were then exposed to either (1) 15 body-focused images of women with a thin-average level of adiposity; (2) as per (1) PLUS 5 postpartum-health-focused images; or (3) as per (1) PLUS 15 postpartum-health-focused images. State body satisfaction/appreciation were assessed before and after image exposure.Results:State body satisfaction/appreciation did not change from pre-to post-image exposure in any groups and measures were not different between groups at any time point.Discussion:Short-term exposure to body-focused imagery typical of Instagram content targeting postpartum women may not alter state body satisfaction or state body appreciation. Furthermore, incorporating postpartum-health-focused imagery did not alter results. Further research investigating whether an intervention providing health information to postpartum women via social media platforms improves health outcomes may be warranted.