A pilot evaluation of a social media literacy intervention to reduce risk factors for eating disorders
Open accessAbstract
Objective: This pilot study investigated the effectiveness of a social media literacy intervention for adolescent girls on risk factors for eating disorders. Method: A quasi‐experimental pre‐ to post‐test design comparing intervention and control conditions was used. Participants were 101 adolescent girls (M age = 13.13, SD = 0.33) who were allocated to receive three social media literacy intervention lessons (n = 64) or to receive classes as usual (n = 37). Self‐report assessments of eating disorder risk factors were completed one week prior to, and one week following the intervention. Results: Significant group by time interaction effects revealed improvements in the intervention condition relative to the control condition for body image (body esteem–weight; d = .19), disordered eating (dietary restraint; d = .26) and media literacy (realism scepticism; d = .32). Discussion: The outcomes of this pilot study suggest that social media literacy is a potentially useful approach for prevention of risk for eating disorders in adolescent girls in the current social media environment of heightened vulnerability. Replication of this research with larger, randomized controlled trials, and longer follow‐up is needed.
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Social media literacy programs can help adolescents become informed consumers of appearance-related content on social media and may help prevent body dissatisfaction and eating disorders.
“Social media literacy programs can help adolescents become informed consumers of appearance-related content on social media and may help prevent body dissatisfaction and eating disorders (McLean et al., 2017).”
From Incorporating social media and muscular ideal internalization into the tripartite influence model of body image: Towards a modern understanding of adolescent girls’ body dissatisfaction (2022) · cites this paper as McLean et al., 2017
The Discussion reports improvements in body esteem, dietary restraint, and media-literacy scepticism after the intervention, supporting the claim that such programs may help with appearance-related content and body dissatisfaction. But the pilot studied adolescent girls only and measured eating-disorder risk factors, not whether eating disorders were prevented; it also had no follow-up assessment. (LLM, conf=0.86)
Experimental — accuracy not yet measuredStudies show comparable benefits between general media literacy and social media literacy programs.
“Reassuringly, studies show comparable benefits between general media and social media literacy programs.317,318”
From Digital Ecosystems, Children, and Adolescents: Technical Report (2026) · cites this paper as [318]
Interventions that contain some elements of media literacy have shown promise in improving body image and reducing internalization of appearance ideals among adolescents.
“Interventions that contain some elements of media literacy have also shown promise in improving body image and reducing internalization of appearance ideals among adolescents [49,50,51,52,53].”
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- Authors
- McLean, S. A., Wertheim, E. H., Masters, J., & Paxton, S. J.
- Affiliations
- La Trobe University (AU)
- University of Tasmania (AU)
- Corresponding author
- McLean, Siân A.
- Venue
- International Journal of Eating Disorders
- Publisher
- Wiley
- Published
- 2017-03-28
- Volume
- 50
- Issue
- 7
- Pages
- 847-851
- ISSN
- 0276-3478 (ISSN-L)
- 1098-108X
- OpenAlex
- W2611212970
- Cited by
- 186
- References
- 21
- Citations by year
- 2026: 25 · 2025: 17 · 2024: 23 · 2023: 26 · 2022: 22 · 2021: 25 · 2020: 20 · 2019: 14 · 2018: 14
- FWCI
- 16.24
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
- doi.org
- Locations
- International Journal of Eating Disorders (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- eCite Digital Repository (University of Tasmania) (submittedVersion)
- UTAS Research Repository (submittedVersion)
- Victoria University Research Repository (Victoria University) (submittedVersion)
- Figshare (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- Funders
- La Trobe University Building Healthy Communities Research Focus Area
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Eating Disorders and Behaviors
- Health Sciences › Nursing › Nutrition and Dietetics › Nutrition, Health and Food Behavior
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Impact of Technology on Adolescents
- Keywords
- social media literacy, eating disorders, eating disorder risk factors, adolescent girls, body image, body esteem, dietary restraint, disordered eating, media literacy, prevention interventions
- MeSH terms
- Literacy, Adolescent, Feeding and Eating Disorders, Female, Humans, Pilot Projects, Risk Factors, Social Media
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