Instagram and body image: Motivation to conform to the “Instabod” and consequences on young male wellbeing

• Published date: 01 December 2020
• Date: 01 December 2020
• Author: Elena Chatzopoulou,Shannon Arzu Dogruyol,Raffaele Filieri
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/joca.12329

ARTICLE

Instagram and body image: Motivation

to conform to the “Instabod”and consequences

on young male wellbeing

Elena Chatzopoulou

1

| Raffaele Filieri

2

|

Shannon Arzu Dogruyol

3

1

Marketing, Kent Business School,

University of Kent, Canterbury, United

Kingdom

2

Marketing, Audencia Business School,

Nantes, France

3

Marketing, Newcastle University,

Newcastle upon Tyne, United Kingdom

Correspondence

Elena Chatzopoulou, Marketing, Kent

Business School, University of Kent,

Canterbury, United Kingdom.

Email: elenachatz@hotmail.com

Abstract

The current paper explores how male Instagram users'

(MIU) perceptions of body image and behavior are

affected by the exposure to fitness hashtags, and the

consequences on their wellbeing. For this purpose, in-

depth interviews were conducted with #fitfam MIU

with different levels of engagement. Low-engagement

MIU with low body-esteem long for the “instabod”and

engage in body transformation efforts to follow the fit-

ness trend popularized by Instagram, to emulate peers

and Instagram celebrities, to gain popularity and to

appear successful. Instagram community members use

positive and negative reinforcements to strengthen

body internalization. The body transformation effort

motivates low-engagement MIU to engage more, which

has various effects on wellbeing: on one side, they feel

anxious and in competition with other peers which

often leads to muscle dysmorphia symptoms; on the

other side, they feel more masculine with higher self-

confidence, they have higher motivation to stay fit and

to eat healthily.

KEYWORDS

body image, Instagram, male Millennials, wellbeing

Received: 1 July 2019 Revised: 5 July 2020 Accepted: 13 July 2020

DOI: 10.1111/joca.12329

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License, which permits use,

distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited and is not used for commercial purposes.

© 2020 The Authors. Journal of Consumer Affairs published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of American Council on Consumer

Interests.

1270 J Consum Aff. 2020;54:1270–1297.wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/joca

1|INTRODUCTION

Body image concerns and eating disorders are escalating in many developed countries, both for

females and males (Lovejoy, 2014). Eating disorders bear the highest death rate of any mental

health illness among males, with 400,000 males in the United Kingdom alone suffering (2017).

In the United States, eating disorders will affect 10 million males at some point in their lives

(Wade, Keski-Rahkonen, and Hudson, 2011).

Traditional mass media are often accused of being responsible for manipulating young male

body image perceptions (Barlett et al., 2008). In image-based social media networks, such as

Instagram, consumers' bodies are constantly on display and under scrutiny. Considering the

popularity of social media among youths, especially teenagers, and the power of picture-based

content that users share, it is crucial to investigate how exposure to this new channel affects

body image perceptions and behavior, and particularly the consequences on consumers' psycho-

logical and physical wellbeing. Instagram is a mobile photo sharing network application, which

allows its users to edit and share photos as well as videos. The mobile photo sharing app is one

of the most popular social networks worldwide and reached one billion monthly active users in

2018, up from 800 million in 2017 and 600 million in December 2016 (Statista, 2017). Instagram

users mainly post image-based content and can either like, comment on or repost other users'

pictures. Tsai and Men's (2013) categorization has been applied in the current study to divide

consumer engagement with social media into two categories: passive engagement, which

involves reading posts and viewing pictures/videos; and an active one, which involves activities

such as posting, sharing a post, or commenting. Thus, for this study, posting by using the fitness

hashtag #fitfam denoted a high level of engagement (i.e., active participation), whereas viewing

and browsing (passive participation) denoted low engagement.

Over recent years, there has been growing scholarly interest in the effect of social media on

female body image perceptions (Fardouly and Vartanian, 2015; Fardouly and Vartanian, 2016;

Ahadzadeh et al. (2017); Hendrickse et al., 2017; Shankardass et al., 2018). These studies have

proven that engagement with social media can have negative effects on young female users'

wellbeing such as poor sleep quality, low self-esteem, increased anxiety and depression (Woods

and Scott, 2016; Primack et al., 2017), low appearance satisfaction and negative mood (Fardouly

et al., 2017), high risk of body dissatisfaction, and thinness obsession (Hendrickse et al., 2017).

In more detail, participants who used more than two social media platforms had significantly

more chances to experience both depression and anxiety symptoms (Primack et al., 2017). Poor

sleep quality is also common among social media users and, as such, it is associated with

increased levels of overall social media use (Woods and Scott, 2016).

The above-mentioned research studies mainly used quantitative approaches and focused

on the effect of social networking platforms (e.g., Facebook) by analyzing their impact on

female body image. However, there is a gap in research about male users of social media

(e.g., Instagram) and how their body perceptions are affected by digital platforms (Perloff, 2014;

Fardouly and Vartanian, 2015; Fardouly and Vartanian, 2016). Lack of research on this

gender may be due to the widespread stereotype that body image concerns affect only females

and that males are at little or no risk of having issues related to their body image (McCabe

and Ricciardelli, 2003; Daniel and Bridges, 2010). Because of this stereotype, male social

media users may not be aware of the effect that social media has on them since males con-

sider body image as a feminine issue and so they are reluctant to publicly share their body

image concerns because they do not want to appear weak, sensitive or vulnerable (Hargreaves

and Tiggemann, 2006).

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