What does "a mediating factor" mean? Is it saying men are more likely to judge themselves harshly than women are as a result of social media? (No time to read the article right now, but really interested.)
Anecdotally--that's not been my experience at all. I work as a counselor Facebook comes up all the time (and not in a good way). Girls/women seem much more vulnerable to negative self-comparisons, to me.
In terms of resilience, jealousy, etc., I wouldn't be too quick to judge parents/young adults/adolescents, etc. as having character flaws that make this social (media) comparison worse. It's really a new language for all of us--and adults are also vulnerable. In the good old days, we weren't constantly bombarded with imagery of others' perfect lives. Steep learning curve.
I think we're all in danger of "judging our insides by other people's outsides" in the new paradigm. I hope articles like this help raise our collective consciousness so we can have thoughtful conversations with our children about perception v. reality.
