From the screen to the bed: Appearance-related social media consciousness and sexual well-being among emerging adult women and men
Bibliographic record
Abstract
In an era when social media presents unprecedented opportunities for self-objectification, research is needed to understand how online and offline self-objectification processes are related to emerging adults’ sexual well-being. In this brief report, we report results from a cross-sectional study examining associations among appearance-related social media consciousness (ASMC), body consciousness during sexual activity, and sexual assertiveness among a mixed-gender sample of emerging adults ( n = 249, M age = 22.30, 54.6% women, 60.6% straight/heterosexual) from four Anglophone countries (United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia). Using self-report measures and controlling for theoretically relevant variables (i.e., general self-objectification, time spent on social media, gender identity, sexual orientation), multiple regression analyses found that higher ASMC was associated with higher body consciousness during sexual activity, with no significant moderation by gender identity or sexual orientation. ASMC was not directly associated with sexual assertiveness, but results indicated a significant indirect effect, such that higher ASMC was associated with lower sexual assertiveness via higher body consciousness during sexual activity. These findings suggest that social media-specific self-objectification may be associated with lower sexual well-being, even when controlling for general self-objectification. Furthermore, body consciousness during sexual activity may be a mechanism through which ASMC relates to lower sexual assertiveness. We discuss these findings through the lens of objectification theory and self-effects theory, highlighting the importance of future research examining associations among self-objectification processes and sexual well-being longitudinally, to better understand how these processes unfold among diverse emerging adults around the world. • Study of appearance-related social media consciousness (ASMC) and sexual well-being. • ASMC is preoccupation with one’s physical appearance in the context of social media. • Sample included emerging adult women and men from four English-speaking countries. • ASMC was associated with greater body image concerns during sexual activity. • Body concerns during sex linked higher ASMC to lower sexual assertiveness.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".