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Abstract

As the use of social media for accessing health information becomes increasingly more nuanced and commonplace, as does our understanding of the impacts on users. Using social media to access health information has increased in popularity, and researchers have begun to explore the potential impacts of doing so. Concerns have emerged over the similarities between some fitness content on social media and eating disorder promotional content, often called "fitspiration" content. The current study attempts to explore why individuals use social media to access health and fitness information, and better understand who is at risk for body-related distress after engaging with different types of content available on social media that claims to be representing health and fitness. 222 participants provided information about their social media use and were randomly assigned to experimental conditions to evaluate three types of images from social media: health and fitness, fitspiration, and a control condition consisting of nature images. No conditional differences were found on a series of measures assessing body image and exercise attitudes after engaging with health content or "fitspiration" content. Maladaptive social media use and eating disorder risk factors did not explain body image distress in the current samples, as explored through SEM analyses. Open-ended questions reveal differential ways in which individuals use social media generally and for health content. Qualitative data also reveals some individuals demonstrate awareness and intentionality about the potential negative impacts engaging with fitspiration content can have. Potential interpretations of the current findings are explored, including a possible manipulation failure, and future directions are suggested.

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