Digital technologies and adolescents’ body image

For teens today, the time they spend with digital technologies represents more than a 40-h work week. In light of the prominent role that technologies take in their lives, this chapter is a review of research on the role of digital technologies in shaping adolescents’ body image. Grounded in sociocultural and social comparison theories, we review evidence on social media, selfies, image retouching, fitspiration, and body-related online forums. We also highlight an important future direction in this research literature: the examination of how digital technologies shape and sustain positive body image. Also, in this review, we foreground the developmental considerations of the adolescent audience and the affordances of digital technologies, ultimately providing a conceptual map of the research by examining the intersections between developmental considerations and technological affordances.