The active-passive dichotomy refined: How types of photo sharing and photo viewing coincide with adolescents’ mental health and body image

Abstract

From both scholarly and public debate there is no clear-cut answer to the question of how social media use (SMU) coincides with mental health and body image. To explain mixed results, we suggest that the active–passive dichotomy should be further specified by the content types one creates or is exposed to (i.e., authentic, edited, intimate, and positive). This study focused on (self-)photo sharing, given the popular focus on appearance on social media. We designed a cross-sectional study to examine how various types of visual active self-presentation, and exposure thereto, coincide with mental health and body image among 408 adolescents (M = 14.07, SD = 1.64; 48.8 % female). Results demonstrated that it is not about being either active or passive on social media, but rather the content types one creates, or sees, that are important to understand how SMU behaviors coincide with mental health and body image. Social media behaviors do not uniformly relate to all mental health and body image indicators. Altogether, the current study emphasized that we should move away from the active–passive frequency dichotomy and follow a more detailed communication-centered approach emphasizing the content types.