Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/272438 
Year of Publication: 
2022
Series/Report no.: 
IZA Discussion Papers No. 15811
Publisher: 
Institute of Labor Economics (IZA), Bonn
Abstract: 
Most teenagers spend several hours per day on social media. We provide a large-scale investigation of the relationship between social media daily usage and body dissatisfaction among a sample of more than 50,000 15 y.o. students. This relation is positive and large for girls—higher use of social networks is associated with higher dissatisfaction about their body—and negative for boys. The positive relation for girls is observed in all eight countries included in the study, covering very different cultural contexts (e.g., Georgia, Ireland, Spain, Mexico, Panama or Hong Kong). It is observed for all girls, no matter their body mass index (BMI), their academic performance, and their socioeconomic background. Instrumenting social networks consumption by students' or students' peers' internet access at home while controlling finely for other students' or students' peers' household characteristics suggests that the relationship between social media consumption and girls' body dissatisfaction could be causal.
Subjects: 
social media
body dissatisfaction
JEL: 
I12
L82
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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