A Study of Youth Appearance Anxiety in Pseudo-environment
Abstract
Social media provide technical support for people to create a perfect self-image, creating a “high value” pseudo-environment. The discrepancy between reality and the pseudo-environment creates appearance anxiety. In order to explore the media perception of young people on the pseudo-environment of “anxiety” about “ appearance”, questionnaire surveys and in-depth interviews were conducted, which were both designed based on the framework of cognitive schema, revealed that young people continuously form new aesthetic standards under the influence of the pseudo-environment, and are deeply involved in the consumption of their bodies without realizing it. Various media are utilizing the audience’s psychology to continuously intensify the anxiety of appearance in pseudo-environment. At the same time, however, combining the online scene of virtual ethnography, it is found that youths who are susceptible to pseudo-environment have similar problems with their sense of identity. Therefore, measures can be proposed to alleviate appearance anxiety from the perspective of improving youth’s sense of self-identity and social identity.
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