Vulnerability to appearance-based social media use and preoccupation: A model of young women's appearance values, depression, and self-esteem via uses and gratification.

Theory and research suggest that women's general affective and appearance-related vulnerabilities are precursors of social media use, with the associations mediated by gratifications sought from social media, such as affection-seeking. To test this, we examined whether the vulnerabilities of low self-esteem, depression, thin-ideal internalisation, appearance perfectionism and appearance-contingent self-worth had indirect associations with appearance-based social media use/preoccupation via social media gratifications of escape, socialising, and affection-seeking. Social media use/preoccupation included general appearance-related activity, self-presentation, and social comparison when online. Participants were 405 young women (Mage = 19.95, SD = 2.70) who completed surveys. In a path model, all vulnerabilities but depressive symptoms were related to more escape and/or socialising gratification and there were three small indirect associations with appearance-based social media use/preoccupation, two for self-esteem (via escape and socialising) and one for thin-ideal internalisation (via socialising). In addition, the three appearance-specific individual vulnerability factors were directly related to appearance-based social media use/preoccupation. Overall, appearance-related vulnerabilities had mostly direct relations with increased appearance-based social media use/preoccupation. In contrast, self-esteem had indirect associations with appearance-based social media use/preoccupation, which were sometimes counterintuitive, and depressive symptoms had little unique impact on gratifications or on appearance-based social media use/preoccupation once other vulnerabilities had been considered.