Project: Social Media Impacts On One’s Body Image

06/30/25:

Hi guys!

Here is a brief introduction to my "Body Image" project that I did for my AP Statistics class.

This project is based on the "Social Media and Body Image" data shared by Professor Mary Prichard from Boise State University: https://data.mendeley.com/datasets/49v6fx7ssg/1

My research focuses on two questions:

1. Are there any differences between male and female students on the “body shame” score (a measure of body image concerns)?

2. Is there a correlation between social media usage time (social media addiction) and body shame score?

For the first question, I utilized one type of the hypothesis testing method I learned in class: two-sample t-test, and I found that female students had higher body image concerns.

For the second question, I did a correlation analysis between the male and female students, from which I concluded that there’s a weak positive correlation between the lengths of social media usage time and body shame scores.

This project is a stepping stone for my upcoming independent research, which I will share soon. It helped me learn how to choose the topic that I am interested in, how to collect and prepare data, and how to use statistical methods to analyze the data.

For more details, please check out below links: https://www.officialpeaceinbeauties.com/my-research