One of the consequences of the pandemic is that throughout 2020 virtual interactions largely replaced face-to-face interactions. Though there are few studies of how social media impacts body image perception across genders, research suggests that socializing through a virtual self-body image might have distinct implications for men and women. On an online study, we examined whether type of social pressure and body-ideal exert distinct pressures on members of the X, Y, and Z generations. Results showed media pressure affected body image satisfaction significantly more than other kinds of social pressure across genders and generations, with young males reporting a higher impact compared to older males. Males experienced more pressure to be muscular and women to be thin, especially for the younger generation.Future research should focus on social media as a potential intervention tool for the detection and prevention of body image disorders in both young female and male adults.

Our ability to perceive our own and other people’s bodies is critical to the success of social interactions. Research has shown that adults have a distorted perception of their own body and those of other adults. However, these studies ask perceivers to estimate for adults that have similar bodily make-up. This study explored the developmental progression in how children perceive their own body (5-12-yrs-olds) (Exp1) and whether children have similar distortions as adults when estimating the dimensions of adult bodies both unknown (Exp2) and familiar to them (Exp3). Overall, children showed similar distortions to those found in adult’s estimations for own body perception (i.e., limbs with a smaller density of sensory receptors showed a larger error than those with a higher density) and perception of adult’s bodies showed less distortion when perceiver and model were of the same gender, but not when the adult was familiar to the child.