The Perfect Li(f)e: a Longitudinal Study on Positive Social Media Content and European Adolescents’ Perfectionism

Youth perfectionism levels have increased significantly over the last decades. Given the dominance of picture-perfect content, social media are often designated as contributors of this rise. Accordingly, this study examined how exposure to positive social media content might increase adolescents’ perfectionistic traits and vice versa. Moreover, it was explored whether upward social comparison and adolescents’ sociocultural context (on a micro and macro level) play, respectively, a mediating and moderating role. A three-wave panel study was conducted among 1697 Belgian, French, and Slovenian adolescents (Mage=15.14, SDage=1.78, 57.2% girls). The between-person results showed that higher trait-like levels of exposure to positive social media content is significantly related to higher trait-like levels of perfectionism. Adolescents’ upward social comparison trait-like levels related to exposure to positive social media content and to socially prescribed perfectionism. A more complex pattern emerged at the within-person level with different results across time intervals, countries, and adolescents’ individualistic values.