Pathways and Impacts of Social Media on Adolescents’ Exposure to Harmful Culture and esthetic Attitudes

Abstract

With the popularization of social media, adolescents are increasingly exposed to online information at an early age and become immersed in it, facing growing influences from negative cultural trends and narrow aesthetic standards. This paper systematically reviews over ten empirical studies conducted within the past five years, revealing that social platforms amplify the exposure frequency of “borderline culture” and the “white, young, and thin” body ideal image through their content recommendation mechanisms. This exposure triggers adolescents’ comparisons of their appearance and increases body anxiety. Simultaneously, interactive behaviors such as posting selfies and reading comments amplify aesthetic internalization, gradually leading adolescents to adopt online standards as benchmarks for self-evaluation. The research further indicates that adolescents demonstrate active agency in imitating and reproducing content during the process of cultural assimilation, forming a “participatory exposure” mechanism. Based on these findings, this paper proposes specific intervention strategies across four domains—platform algorithms, media literacy education, family communication, and research pathways—to help adolescents develop diverse and healthy body perception systems.