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A new study has found that Instagram posts are not showing the average woman’s postpartum journey. The postpartum period can be challenging for any woman out there. They may feel like they are not “bouncing back” as they should be, and social media is not helping.
A woman who has just given birth may be scrolling through her social media accounts, and she finds that her feeds are filled with images of other women who just gave birth, and look like they weren’t even pregnant. It is easy to fall into that trap that makes you feel like you are the only one navigating the postpartum period this way, and it can be isolating and depressing.
According to Medical Xpress, a new study has found that Instagram “post-baby” pictures do not reflect what is actually happening with the average woman.
The study was published in the journal, Healthcare, and it can be read in full here. What they found was that the average woman is not posting post-body shots of themselves after they have given birth. This means that what a new mom is seeing is almost always the exception and not the rule.
This is concerning because social media, which is a part of almost everyone’s life, can give an unrealistic view of what life is like after a baby. This can cause some harm to a woman’s self-esteem and mental health when she is in a period where she is already dealing with hormones and other concerns.
Megan Gow, the lead author of the study, stated that these pictures are presenting what she calls an “idealized” version of the postpartum body, but that is not realistic. This is contributing to the amount of body image issues that a lot of women are dealing with after they give birth.
To complete this study, researchers looked at more than 400 Instagram pictures that had the hashtag #postpartumbody, and they found that 48% of women had “defined” muscles, and almost all of them were in workout clothes. This means that they are already in the gym and working out, and while that may be great for some moms, this is not what the average new mom is doing.
The women who are posting pictures after birth are the moms who do not have a lot of access weight, which means the other moms, which is the majority, are not posting pictures. The takeaway from this is to never compare yourself to what you see on social media and to always remember people only post what they want people to see.
Sources: Medical Xpress, MDPI
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