Navigating a muscular and sexualized Instagram feed: An experimental study examining how Instagram affects both heterosexual and nonheterosexual men’s body image

Despite nearly equal Instagram use rates between men and women, research on the effects of Instagram use on body image has mainly focused on women, and continued research on visual social media is warranted. To fill this gap, we conducted a 2 (image muscularity; high vs. low) × 2 (image sexualization; high vs. low) + 1 (control) between-subjects online experiment among 133 young adult men. Among all participants, we examined the moderating effect of sexual orientation, hypermasculinity, and trait appearance-related social comparison. We considered internalized homophobia among men who did not identify as exclusively heterosexual. Results demonstrated no main or interaction effects of condition on intention to exercise. There was a small but significant main effect of condition on state body image, with scores significantly lower in the muscular/nonsexualized condition in comparison to the control. Further, the effect of exposure to muscular Instagram images was stronger among men higher in trait appearance-related social comparison and among nonheterosexual men higher in internalized homophobia. These results suggest that similar to findings among women, exposure to certain types of Instagram images can have small, negative body image effects on men, which are conditional on individual differences.