The Interactive Media and Gender-related Stressors and Strengths Study

Overview

Emerging adulthood is a key developmental period with unique challenges, including elevated risk of substance use (including risky drinking, cigarette use, and illicit drug use), eating disorder symptoms, and severe psychological distress and suicidal ideation. This critical developmental period also offers an important opportunity for interventions to prevent adverse mental health outcomes in adulthood, particularly those related to substance use and disordered eating behaviors. Research suggests several relevant potential targets for preventive interventions in this age group. Online media, especially social media (e.g., Instagram), are used by 90% of U.S. young adults, offering unprecedented access to informational and social support for young adults. Yet online media also provide new channels for harmful exposure to stigma (e.g., online harassment) and sociocultural appearance ideals for young adults. Such exposures may cause or exacerbate substance use and adverse mental health outcomes. Existing brief interventions that improve media literacy (i.e., the ability to critically analyze and interpret media) and increase resistance to harmful sociocultural appearance ideals offer promise in supporting young adults to reduce body dissatisfaction and stress and coping behaviors (like substance use and disordered eating behaviors). However, these interventions have not previously accounted for the core role of body dissatisfaction or unique dimensions of social media literacy in young adults' health. Further, existing preventive interventions in this area have primarily been developed and tested with a focus on cisgender young people. To date, there are no gender-inclusive evidence-based interventions to address both social media-based stressors (e.g., harassment, appearance ideals) and resilience factors (e.g., social support) for young adults.

To address this gap, the investigators have been developing an interactive psychoeducational website as a brief preventive intervention (called the IMAGES Project Digital toolkit). The toolkit can be found at www.imagesproject.com. In the final phase of this study, an exploratory, single-arm feasibility study of the digital toolkit with a sample of young adults (n=120) ages 18-25 years will be conducted. The study design will entail baseline, immediate-post-intervention, and 3-month follow-up assessments. Primary outcomes are: intervention feasibility, acceptability, and participant satisfaction. In addition we will collect preliminary data on selected exploratory outcomes: social media-related risk factors for disordered eating and substance use (e.g., social media literacy skills, appearance ideal internalization) and selected behaviors (disordered eating and substance use). This study will determine the extent to which the digital toolkit (brief intervention) is feasible, acceptable, and suitable for future testing among US young adults.