Discussion
weight gain
This research examined how DE and social media portrayals of pregnancy influence young women’s attitudes toward a potential pregnancy, perceived self-efficacy about maintaining healthy eating habits throughout pregnancy, attitudes toward gestational weight gain, and pre-pregnancy body image. Specifically, we hypothesized that young women with higher levels of DE thoughts and/or behaviors would have more negative attitudes toward a potential pregnancy, have lower self-efficacy about maintaining healthy eating habits throughout pregnancy, have more negative attitudes toward gestational weight gain, and have lower body image when considering a potential pregnancy. Supporting our hypothesis, young women with higher levels of DE behaviors had lower perceived self-efficacy about maintaining healthy eating habits throughout pregnancy. Pregnancy can be a time of significant stress for women, and DE behaviors tend to worsen during periods of distress [Additionally, contrary to our hypothesis, we found that young women with higher levels of DE thoughts had more positive attitudes toward gestational weight gain. This is unexpected as we expected that women with significant preoccupations with food and eating would be less accepting of weight gain, even during pregnancy [In addition, supporting our hypothesis, young women with higher levels of DE thoughts had lower pre-pregnancy body image when considering a potential pregnancy. We predicted this effect because young women with higher levels of DE thoughts tend to have particularly negative weight satisfaction, even without considering a potential pregnancy [Given that modified pictures of pregnancy on social media can give women unrealistic expectations of what they should look like if they were to become pregnant [The third hypothesis stated that young women with higher levels of DE who viewed modified social media portrayals of pregnancy would have more negative attitudes toward a potential pregnancy, lower self-efficacy about maintaining healthy eating habits during pregnancy, more negative attitudes toward gestational weight gain, and lower current body image when considering a potential pregnancy than young women with low levels of DE who viewed unmodified social media portrayals of pregnancy. Our results found no support for the influence of DE and social media portrayal of pregnancy on young women’s attitudes toward a potential pregnancy. In fact, we found no other effects on women’s attitudes toward a potential pregnancy. It is possible that the lack of effects might be driven by the age of the women (Finally, this interaction was not significant for any of the other measures: self-efficacy, attitudes toward gestational weight gain, or current body image when considering a potential pregnancy. It is possible that there is no relationship between DE and social media portrayals of pregnancy. However, it is more likely that this relationship exists, but the manner in which we examined it, with a relatively short exposure to pregnancy portrayals in social media might not have had the substantial impact that we were expecting. It is more likely that continuous and prolonged exposure to the manner in which pregnancy is portrayed in social media relates to the development or maintenance of DE and its cumulative impact on self-efficacy about maintaining healthy eating habits during pregnancy, more negative attitudes toward gestational weight gain, and lower current body image when considering a potential pregnancy. Taken together, hypothesis 3 was not supported.