In the digital era, social media has become a potent tool, shaping perceptions, opinions, and behaviors among young people. It has transformed young people’s experiences with fashion, trends, and consumer culture. This examining how attitudes toward social media influencers affect youth fashion interest through social comparison, addressing a gap in the cultural context of Pakistan. It was hypothesized that positive attitudes toward social media influencers would predict youth fashion interest trends through the mediator of social comparison. This research paper adopts a quantitative approach, using a survey to gather data from university students in Rawalpindi and Islamabad, Pakistan. The results indicated a significant relationship among the variables. Mediation analysis supported the mediating role of social comparison in the relationship between attitudes towards social media influencers and youth fashion interest. For the mean comparison by gender, no significant differences were found between men and women regarding the study variables. The study extended Bandura’s social cognitive theory past mere observation of a model by explaining the mediating role of social comparison. Moreover, the study updated Festinger’s social comparison theory for the era of social media.
Safdar et al. (Wed,) studied this question.