Bidirectional associations between online and offline appearance concerns during early-to-middle adolescence.

During early and middle adolescence, individuals are at heightened risk of poor body image and subsequent negative mental health outcomes, and the highly visual nature of social media may play a role in this process. It remains unclear, however, if appearance preoccupation on social media-such as appearance-related social media consciousness (ASMC)-influences offline body image, or if preexisting body image concerns influence online appearance preoccupation. The present study investigated between-person differences and potential bidirectional within-person associations in these experiences among eighth grade adolescents in the United States (