An examination of social media on body imagine, a perspective of a male body builder in Ireland

The purpose of this study is to examine the effect that images commonly distributed amongst modern social media sites have, on young Millennials male body-builders in Ireland. Festinger`s (1957) social comparison theory will be used to determine how can those who use photo share on-line facilities like “Instagram” can be affected. While many studies have indicated that there is correlation between body concerns amongst young females (Meier et al., 2014;Rodgers and Chabrol, 2009; Halliwell and Dittmar, 2005) via the usage of social media sites, the males audience seems to be neglected resulting in noticeable knowledge gaps, in regards to male body builders. Moreover, `Selfie` phenomena is constantly increasing and affecting more young individuals than before. The number of new active users is constantly growing along with the number of photos that are being uploaded on-line. According to Papisova (2016) Instagram has up to 250milion #selfies up to date. Additionally, millennials seem to dominate in the ‘selfie’ world adding up to 55% of the total self portraits uploaded (Papisova, 2016). Pop culture along with the Hollywood cinematic characters seems to be `pumping the iron` and constantly growing in muscle shape. Ideal, muscular bodies are ubiquitous across all media which is having a dramatic effect on young men, their body image and body behaviours (Heid, 2017; Coffey, 2014). New modern social tribes such as metrosexuality or spornosexuality (Brennan, 2007; Hall and Gough, 2011; Simpson, 2012) are being created and fed into the individuals. The need to be own perfect body hero trend just seems to be accelerating in a shocking speed. Tanning salons, gyms and body building magazines sales are peaking throughout the whole country (CSO,ie, 2017; Notaro, 2017). As much as 500,000 Irish adults participate weekly in over 700 different gym facilities around the country (National Sports Policy Framework Public Consultation Paper, 2017). Moreover, according to Valentine (2015) as much as 850,000 Irish adults are members of gym, representing almost 22% of the total population of Ireland (Valentine, 2015). Furthermore, according to a report by McGeown (2016) Irish customers have spent on gym and fitness related services back in 2015 over 690Milion Euro and this figure is expected to further grow up to 749milion by 2021 (McGeown, 2016). This could indicate that there is more demand for fit, perfect bodies or customers are just more body aware. Some would suggest that modern social media sites such as `Instagram` or `Facebook` could facilitate the need to look fit via the `selfies` phenomenon (Eisenberg, Wall and Neumark-Sztainer, 2012; Fardouly et al., 2015). This dissertation is going to further evaluate if there is a problem growing in the modern Irish society or just another fashion trend is taking place, which will pass on with time.