The Negative Impact of TikTok FYP on the Perception of Adolescent Girls
Short videos uploaded on TikTok have a negative impact on its users, especially on girls' perceptions of their bodies and fashion.
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TikTok is a social media that is popular with young people, especially women because it offers entertainment for its users. However, it turns out that this video-based social media also influences the image and self-satisfaction of its users.
tafansa.id reported via the PsyPost page, there is a report on the results of a study from the University of Tennessee conducted by Danielle Bissonette Mink and Dawn M. Szymanski.
According to them, short videos uploaded on the TikTok page have a negative impact on its users, especially girls.
This can be seen from the survey results that there is a lot of short video content on the front page of TikTok's "For Your Page/(FYP)", which shows off sexy dances, attractive figures, and weight loss success stories, even though the account owner doesn't follow or are interested, with content like this.
Seeing these results, Mink and Szymanski gathered 778 female students aged 18 to 29 years as participants in their research.
They also came to the conclusion that some of the 778 participants who installed the TikTok application experienced losses because participants experienced changes in their perception of body image to become negative.
They also have a wrong understanding of their image, physique and appearance, which causes increased dissatisfaction with the body they have and the fashion they wear.
In their statement, Mink and Szymanski wrote that "our findings suggest that image-based social media use poses risks to women's positive body image."
Actually, this is not entirely the fault of the TikTok application because this social media platform offers positive content regarding body image.
However, the social media literacy of its users, coupled with the commercial exposure that appears on the front page of "For Your Page/(FYP)", does not protect users, giving rise to this negative impact.
Mink and Szymanski also concluded in their research report with the suggestion that women should limit themselves in using the social media TikTok so that their perception of their bodies does not become increasingly negative.
Mink and Szymanski also concluded with the hope that further research should be conducted to explore other potential buffers in this link, including body neutrality.
So, women will be helped to combat their thoughts of dissatisfaction with their bodies due to too often viewing videos or pictures on social media.
Image source: https://www.pexels.com/photo/person-using-a-smartphone-5081926/
