How ‘malleable mediated ideals’ affect how young people define success
As the media landscape continues to shift and evolve, we are finding the impacts can extend deep into our psyche. Today’s young people, for example, are more inclined to define success based on what they see online rather than in real life. Such ‘malleable ideals’, or idealised representations of achievement, can come from content creators or influencers, for example, who present themselves as highly relatable yet also appear beautiful, popular, exciting and professionally successful. Our natural comparison tendencies are also present when interacting with social media, meaning that social media users compare themselves with the posts of others and even the idealised imagery of themselves. “For instance, adolescents who often post selfies in which they look beautiful tend to become more uncertain about their appearance over time,” explains Laura Vandenbosch, director of the Media Psychology Lab(opens in new window) at KU Leuven(opens in new window). “A link also exists between exposure to picture-perfect images on social media of others and higher levels of perfectionism in adolescents in different European countries.” Through the MIMIc(opens in new window) project, which was funded by the European Research Council(opens in new window), Vandenbosch and her team explored the impacts of malleable ideals in mass and social media. The researchers developed a new theoretical perspective to direct future research into their effects on adolescents. “Our findings can further motivate parents and educators to continue and perhaps increase their media literacy socialisation efforts as they seem to be a powerful factor in ensuring youth are digitally flourishing,” says Vandenbosch.
Developing a new theoretical model
To investigate how malleable mediated ideals play a role in adolescent user lives, the team conducted qualitative and quantitative research in adolescents in three different European countries: Belgium, Slovenia and France. This explored how conscious young social media users are about the pressures brought on by their daily scrolling behaviour. “For instance, they notice how many figures in social media posts resemble beauty ideals and seem to have a fun life,” notes Vandenbosch. “Moreover, they express concern for themselves but also other social media users about how these mediated ideals may cause stress,” she adds. However, not all outcomes are negative, as some adolescents encounter inspiring content creators who promote positive body images, for example. Yet over the long term, not everyone will experience such positive interactions: around a third felt increased dependence and less control over their smartphone over a year. Some content can also bring mixed outcomes within individuals, too, such as inspiring people to visit nature but triggering at the same time appearance-based comparisons. “Importantly, a substantial group of adolescents shows little advantage from their digital media use,” explains Vandenbosch. “Moreover, algorithms play a role in making content with high potential to evoke antisocial effects in users, such as beauty ideals and gendered messages, highly accessible and thus encountered frequently.”
Encouraging digital flourishing
The MIMIc team hopes the findings can inspire platform changes in the way content is pushed towards teenagers and children, along with informing media literacy interventions. “We now better understand which media interaction dynamics explain why some content is empowering to some users and not to others,” remarks Vandenbosch. “Parents are advised to guide their teens to digitally flourish,” she adds. “This means for instance posting more authentically on social media, using digital media to be informed about the world and comparing themselves less with mediated ideals.”
