Does medium matter? Investigating the impact of viewing ideal image or short-form video content on young women’s body image, mood, and self-objectification

There is a rising prevalence of short-form videos on social media, particularly since the advent of TikTok. Viewing appearance-ideal images has harmful effects on young women’s body image. However, the impacts of viewing appearance-ideal short-form videos on body image are largely unknown. This study investigated the impact of viewing appearance-ideal short-form social media video content on young women’s (Mage = 19.19, SD = 1.80) state appearance satisfaction, negative mood, self-objectification, and related constructs, compared to viewing appearance-ideal image content and appearance-neutral content. Young women (N = 211) were shown either: (1) appearance-ideal images, (2) appearance-ideal videos, (3) appearance-neutral images, or (4) appearance-neutral videos. Viewing appearance-ideal content regardless of the medium led to decreased appearance satisfaction, and increased negative mood, and self-objectification, and more state internalisation of appearance ideals compared to viewing appearance-neutral content. Further, if women perceived the appearance-ideal content they viewed to be unedited or unenhanced, they reported less appearance satisfaction after viewing video than image content. Thus, the impact of viewing ideal video and image content taken from social media may have similar effects on young women. However, when ideal content is low in perceived enhancement, viewing videos may be more harmful for appearance satisfaction than viewing images.