Childhood maltreatment and appearance-related social media consciousness: the moderating role of gender and social media use time.

OBJECTIVE

Appearance-related social media consciousness (ASMC) has emerged as an important construct for understanding appearance-related vulnerability in social media contexts, yet its developmental antecedents remain underexplored. This study examined the associations between retrospectively reported childhood maltreatment and ASMC and tested whether these associations varied by gender and social media use time.

METHODS

Participants were 405 Chinese university students recruited from two universities. They completed measures of ASMC, childhood maltreatment, social media use time, and demographic characteristics. Path analysis, multi-group analysis, and moderation analysis were conducted, with body mass index (BMI) controlled.

RESULTS

Emotional abuse (β = 0.12, p = 0.040) and sexual abuse (β = 0.12, p = 0.014) were positively associated with ASMC, whereas physical neglect was negatively associated with ASMC (β = -0.13, p = 0.047). The overall pattern of maltreatment-ASMC associations differed by gender, Δχ 2(5) = 11.50, p = 0.042. Direct Wald tests indicated that only the sexual abuse-ASMC association differed significantly between males and females, χ 2(1) = 9.61, p = 0.002.

CONCLUSION

These findings suggest that retrospectively reported childhood maltreatment is associated with ASMC, with different maltreatment subtypes showing distinct patterns of association. The sexual abuse-ASMC association differed significantly by gender, whereas no significant moderating effect of social media use time was found.