The good, the bad, and the self on social media: how self-awareness and self-esteem influence selective exposure to social comparisons

The study examines how self-awareness and self-esteem influence selective exposure to online blog posts depicting upward and downward social comparison targets. A total of 134 college students, with a mean age of 21.38 years and comprising 70.6% females, participated in an online experiment. Public and private self-awareness were manipulated by asking participants to create a social media profile that was either publicly viewable or viewable only to themselves. State self-esteem was measured as a moderator. Participants then browsed the blog posts freely for five minutes. The time spent reading articles depicting upward and downward social comparison targets (portrayals of successful vs. unsuccessful others) was unobtrusively recorded as the dependent variable, selective exposure. The results show that, for participants with low state self-esteem, heightened public self-awareness led to more time spent on upward social comparisons while heightened private self-awareness resulted in more time spent on downward social comparisons. Furthermore, participants with high state self-esteem in the private self-awareness condition demonstrated greater selective exposure to upward comparisons.