Why do teenage girls have more appearance anxiety than teenage boys?

Abstract

A field experiment was performed to investigated the effect of three variables on appearance anxiety level. More and more people have developed varying degrees of anxiety about their appearance. This article summarizes the understanding of this issue and explores the influence on teenagers’ anxiety about appearance from three factors: social media, family, and peers. A total of 160 questionnaires of teenagers answers were received, with 48.75% being male and 50.63% being female. Through data analysis, researcher was found that social media and family are the main agencies influencing the degree of body image anxiety among teenagers of different genders. For social media, girls receive more comments about appearance, because business believes that girls have stronger consumer ability, if girls worries about their appearance, they will spend more. Also, in the family parents’ harsher evaluations of girls lead to more anxiety among them. Regarding the influencing factors of teenagers’ appearance anxiety, there are still many aspects that require in-depth research. By reviewing the existing literature and the knowledge obtained from the research conducted so far, this project provides research directions that are likely to lead to future advances.