The Effects of Facebook Images on Women’s Self-Esteem and Body Image

Abstract

This project looked at the effects Facebook images have on women’s self-esteem and body image. Previous studies have shown how women are negatively effected by the images they are presented with in the media by way of magazines and television. Therefore, with this study my goal was to see if the same was held true through social media such as Facebook. For this project I analyzed Elle, Glamour and Vogue’s Facebook pages. In particular I analyzed 40 images of women on each of their Facebook pages. From there I wanted to find if the number of likes the images received were related to how sexualized the women were in each of the images. Through this study I found that highly sexualized images do receive more likes than images that were less sexualized. This conclusion supported by hypothesis. In addition, the following study shows how marketing and advertising has not changed as technology has advanced. Even through social media, women are constantly being exposed to images that can have a negative impact on them in a variety of ways.