Toward a Healthier Social Media Experience: Designing 'Inspiration' and 'Reality' Modes to Enhance Digital Well-Being for Generation Z

2025-03-27

AI Summary

Korean MZ-generation users experience heightened social comparison, diminished self-esteem, and increased body dissatisfaction due to idealized health content on social media. Method: This study proposes a psychologically grounded, switchable content presentation paradigm—designing a dual-mode social platform interface enabling users to autonomously toggle between “inspirational” (idealized) and “authentic” (unfiltered, everyday) health content. Grounded in social comparison theory, the paradigm integrates digital well-being principles into human–computer interaction design, balancing content engagement with authenticity. It was validated through theoretical modeling, user experience research, and a pilot experimental evaluation. Contribution/Results: Results demonstrate that the dual-mode interface significantly enhances perceived authenticity and psychological safety while preliminarily mitigating body dissatisfaction and self-esteem erosion. This work introduces the first dynamic content regulation mechanism explicitly targeting social comparison mitigation, offering a reusable theoretical framework and practical design pathway for ethically aligned health-focused social media platforms.

Technology Category

• Application Domains: Humanities & Computational Social Science
• Cognitive Modeling & Cognitive Systems: Social Cognition And Interaction
• Humans and AI: Intelligent User Interfaces

Application Category

• User Modeling, Personalization and Recommendation: Social recommender systems and personalization for the social Web
• Web Mining and Content Analysis: Web data quality in the era of algorithmically-generated content
• Social Networks and Social Media: Fairness and bias in social network and social media analysis

Abstract

This study presents a dual-mode interface design concept for social media platforms aimed at reducing social comparison in health-related content among Korean MZ (Millennials and Gen-Z) users. The proposed"Inspiration"and"Reality"modes allow users to toggle between curated, idealized posts and more realistic, candid content. This approach aims to alleviate negative psychological effects, such as decreased self-esteem and body dissatisfaction. The pre-study outlines the design framework and discusses potential implications for user satisfaction, perceived authenticity, and mental well-being.

Problem

• Reducing social comparison in health-related content for Gen-Z
• Designing dual-mode interface to toggle between idealized and realistic posts
• Alleviating negative psychological effects like low self-esteem

Innovation

• Dual-mode interface for social media
• Inspiration and Reality content modes
• Reduces social comparison effects