ArticleFrontiers in psychology2025
They are more beautiful than me! How social media use increases women's body-related envy and cosmetic surgery consideration.
Article in Frontiers in psychology, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 5 papers.
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Who cites it
5 citing papers in PubMed.
- The age-group difference in psychological motivations for penile girth enhancement surgery in Chinese men: a cross-sectional study.Sexual medicine · 2026Article
- Looksmaxxing and the Digital Evolution of Male Beauty Standards: Ethical Implications in Plastic Surgery.Plastic and reconstructive surgery. Global open · 2026Article
- Tick-Tock, the Time Has Come: Leveraging TikTok to Understand, Prevent, and Treat Eating Disorders.The International journal of eating disorders · 2026Review
- Body image and self-attractiveness in a relationship during the menopausal transition: associations with digital media and perceived media influence.Frontiers in public health · 2026Article
- Gender differences in gaze patterns to Instagram influencer body parts: predicted by subjective body image perception and negative affect.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
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Abstract
Background: Past research has indicated the close connection between social media use and women's envy, but so far, no research has been conducted to exclusively examine the effect and mechanism of social media use on women's body-related envy. Objective: To fill this gap, with TikTok as a representative example of video-based social media, four studies ( Method and results: In Study 1a, we employed an online questionnaire survey and found that TikTok use had a significantly positive prediction on women's body-related envy. In Study 1b, we temporarily activated the TikTok use state in the lab and found that participants in the TikTok use priming condition reported greater body-related envy than those in the control condition. In Study 2, we divided TikTok use into active and passive TikTok use and then applied an online questionnaire survey to examine the relationship and mechanism between active/passive TikTok use and women's body-related envy. The results showed that passive TikTok use, rather than active TikTok use, had a significant prediction on women's body-related envy, and appearance upward comparison played a fully mediating role between them. In Study 3, we conducted an online experiment to explore the downstream consequences related to women's body-related envy. The results showed that, partially Conclusion: Passive social media use can significantly increase women's body-related envy
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.