“I like to see the ups and downs of my own journey”: Returning to Past Content about Weight Related Journeys on Social Media

Abstract

In a society where diet culture sells a singular idea equating thinness with beauty and worth and social media content stigmatizing weight is widespread, some social media users share content documenting their journeys with weight online and, as a result, develop personal digital archives filled with personal, potentially stigmatized and emotionally-sensitive content. Through 17 semi-structured interviews with individuals, between the ages of 18 and 24, who share(d) about a weight-related journey (including weight acceptance, weight maintenance, weight loss, weight gain and more) on social media, this thesis explores the ways users engage with the past and a ‘personal archive’ that documents their personal weight-related journeys. This work details the motivations behind their returns to the past and the impacts this had on their perceived well-being. I argue these returns to the past forced an engagement between users’ past and current selves in ways that resulted in dynamic interpretations of the self and led to positive and negative impacts on well-being. I proposed ways social media may start to reconcile and support its users engaging with a past that is sensitive or impacted by stigma. Lastly, I identified weight-related journeys as a case where researchers can explore the implications of social media as a personal archive when its digital artifacts create a repository of data that holds sway over one’s self-concept and well-being, such as an archive prompting comparisons of the self that attribute one version, past or present, as more worthy.