The Influence of Social Media on Russian Youth's Perception of Body Positive Movement

This paper examines the "bodypositive" movement, which has been gaining popularity in social networks in recent years. The problem of the study is that this movement, as well as the attitude of young people to it, is poorly studied in Russia. Bodypositive strongly affects the minds of young people, their behavior patterns. And their perception of this movement is influenced by social networks, in particular, the Instagram network. The purpose of the study was to identify the impact of online communication on the topic of body positivity in the social network Instagram on the attitude of Russian youth to this movement. To achieve this goal, it was necessary to perform the following tasks: to consider theoretical approaches to the concept of body positivity, to study the features of online communication on the topic of body positivity in Instagram, to analyze the opinions of Russian youth regarding the movement of body positivity and its participants. As a research method, a survey was chosen as the most appropriate method to achieve the goal. The survey was conducted by more than 600 representatives of Russian youth aged 18 to 35. The results showed that the majority of young people are familiar with this movement, although many are influenced by the stereotypes created around it. The analysis of the data partly confirmed the hypotheses that young people tend to support the "bodypositive" movement, and the Instagram network contributes to this positive attitude.