“There is so much pressure on teen girls and young women to portray themselves as sexy, but sharing those sexy photos online may have more negative consequences than positive,” Elizabeth Daniels, the study’s lead researcher and an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Colorado, said in a statement. “We need to understand what [young women] are doing online and how that affects their self-concept and their self-esteem.”
Daniels and co-author Eileen Zurbriggen conducted their investigation by creating two fictitious social media profiles, both for a 20-year-old woman who they named Amanda Johnson. For the sake of finding common ground with other females in their character’s age group, Amanda “liked” musicians such as Lady Gaga, the book “Twilight” and the movie “The Notebook.” Both profiles contained all the same information, with only one difference: profile picture. In one profile, “Amanda” (really a young woman who agreed to have her photograph used in the study, as with the other profile picture) was shown wearing a low-cut red dress with a slit up the leg, revealing a garter belt and some cleavage. In the other profile, a second young woman was shown wearing a short-sleeve t-shirt, jeans and a scarf that covered her chest.
The researchers polled a total of 118 girls and young woman, 58 of whom were between the ages of 13 and 18 and 60 of whom were aged 17-25 and were no longer in high school. Each participant was shown one of the two Facebook profiles and then asked to respond to a series of statements about Amanda’s appearance, such as “I think she is pretty,” as well as statements about her social attractiveness (“I think she could be my friend”) and her task competence (“I believe she could get a job done”). Responses were given on a scale of 1-7, with 1 indicating strong disagreement and 7 indicating enthusiastic agreement.