Adolescent Athletes’ Self-Presentations on Social Media and Their Self-Esteem as Moderated by Their Perceptions of Responsiveness by Others

Abstract

Social media has been an increasingly utilized communication tool, and it has gained popularity among adolescent athletes. Our aim here was to investigate whether a positive and honest self-presentation on social media increased adolescent athletes' self-esteem, and we examined the moderating effect of perceived responsiveness. After receiving informed consent of participants and their parents/legal guardians, we recruited 468 adolescent athletes/participants (244 males, 224 females; Mage = 15.39 years, SD = 1.61) through purposive sampling and engaged them in completing face-to-face or online self-report measures of their: (a) self-presentation on social media, (b) perceived responsiveness of others, and (c) Rosenberg self-esteem scales. Given the continuous nature of our moderating variable (i.e., perceived responsiveness), we conducted regression analysis using Hayes’s PROCESS macro in SPSS software. A positive self-presentation showed no significant relationship with self-esteem, except when the level of perceived responsiveness was high. Conversely, an honest self-presentation was positively related to higher self-esteem, and the relationship between honest self-presentation and self-esteem was moderated by perceived responsiveness. Our findings extend existing psychological theory into the online environment and have practical implications. These data highlight the link between social media self-presentation and self-esteem among adolescent athletes and illustrate the crucial role of perceived responsiveness in the social media context.

Стратегії Самопрезентацій Студентської Молоді У Виборі Тенденцій Поведінки

“…The research on social norms and self-representations of young Finns on Facebook and Last.fm found that the participants usually pursued the identical socio-cultural objective -presentation of authenticity . Another positive example is the study establishing a statistically significant correlation of honest presentation in social networks with junior athletes' self-esteem (Yang et al, 2024). Unlike the above studies, S. Balanji et al (2023) researched creation of another account on "Instagram" with low rates for authentic self-presentation which is usually called Finsta D. Paulhus (2002) у авторській методиці феномен соціальної бажаності вимірює двома шкалами -"самообман" і "управління враженнями".…”

“…соціокультурну мету -презентацію автентичності . Також позитивним прикладом є з'ясування статистично достовірного зв'язку чесної презентації в соціальних мережах із самооцінкою юних спортсменів (Yang et al, 2024). На відміну від представлених досліджень, S. Balanji et al (2023) вивчали створення другого облікового запису "Instagram" із низькими ставками для автентичної самопрезентації, який зазвичай називають Finsta (комбінація "Fake" та "Instagram").…”