Introduction Appearance anxiety is increasingly common among university students in the digital era, yet the mechanisms linking internet addiction to appearance anxiety remain unclear. Methods Using survey data from 522 undergraduates from five universities in Shanghai, we tested a mediation model in which upward social comparison explains the association between internet addiction and appearance anxiety, and a moderated mediation model in which autonomous participation in physical activity (APPA) buffers this pathway. Analyses were conducted with Hayes’ PROCESS (Models 4 and 58), controlling for demographic variables and daily internet use time. Results (1) Internet addiction was not directly associated with appearance anxiety. However, upward social comparison accounted for a significant indirect association between Internet addiction and appearance anxiety, with an indirect effect of 0.105, representing 56.15% of the total effect. (2) APPA moderated both the association between Internet addiction and upward social comparison and the association between upward social comparison and appearance anxiety. Specifically, these associations were weaker among students with higher levels of APPA. Discussion (1) Internet addiction is indirectly associated with appearance anxiety through upward social comparison. (2) APPA may buffer this indirect pathway by weakening the associations between Internet addiction and upward social comparison, and between upward social comparison and appearance anxiety. These results highlight the potential value of addressing maladaptive social comparison in online contexts and promoting autonomous engagement in physical activity in prevention and intervention practices.
Huang et al. (Thu,) studied this question.