Cross-sectional and longitudinal relationships between young student women’s experiences of everyday sexual harassment on social media and self-objectification, body shame, and personal safety anxiety

Sexual harassment is highly prevalent in online settings, including social media, and has negative consequences for young women’s mental health. Understanding the psychological mechanisms underpinning these negative effects is important. Using an expanded Objectification Theory model as our theoretical framework (Calogero et al., 2021), we examine the relationship between sexual harassment on social media and young student women’s body shame and personal safety anxiety, cross-sectionally and longitudinally including by examining self-objectification as a mediator. Data from 207 student women aged 18-25-years (M = 21.06, SD = 1.89) from the UK were collected at two time points ten weeks apart. Cross-sectional analyses at Time 1 and Time 2 showed that sexual harassment on social media was indirectly associated with body shame and physical safety anxiety via self-objectification, with additional direct paths to body shame (Time 1 and 2) and physical safety anxiety (Time 2 only). Over 10 weeks, sexual harassment on social media was not indirectly associated with body shame or physical safety anxiety, via self-objectification at Time 1 or Time 2. These findings provide cross-sectional but not longitudinal support for an expanded Objectification Theory model in online contexts. Our findings have important methodological implications for research examining objectification processes over time that are discussed within. Key words: online sexual harassment, objectification theory, self-objectification, body image, personal safety anxiety, social media