Looking Good, Fitting In: Co-Trajectories of Appearance- and Friendship-Related Identity Distress and Positive Online Self-Presentation in Adolescence

Adolescence is a critical period for identity development, often accompanied by identity distress. Simultaneously, adolescents are also preoccupied with presenting themselves as positive as possible on social media, which may reflect and reinforce identity distress. Yet, the dynamic associations between adolescents’ identity distress and positive online self-presentations remain unexplored. Accordingly, this three-wave panel study among adolescents from Belgium, France, and Slovenia (N = 1697; Mage = 15.14, SDage = 1.78, 57.2% girls) used Latent Class Growth Analysis to identify distinct co-trajectories of identity distress and positive online self-presentation in the domains of friendship and appearance over one year. The findings showed that identity distress and positive self-presentations can follow maladaptive, adaptive, or stable co-trajectories over time, depending on the identity domain, adolescents’ demographic and social media use characteristics. In doing so, the study provides novel evidence on the heterogeneous co-development of adolescents’ identity distress and online self-presentation.