Zixuan Zhang

2 papers in the library · publishing 2026

Papers

Brief Mindfulness Meditation Protects Chinese Young Women's Body Image from Appearance-Focused Social Media Exposure: An Online Randomized Controlled Trial.

Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) January 4, 2026 Xiaoxiao Zhang, Zixuan Zhang

A brief ten-minute mindfulness meditation audio helped young Chinese women maintain body satisfaction and positive mood after viewing idealized social media images on Xiaohongshu, while a control group that listened to a natural history text showed significant worsening on both measures. In an online randomized trial with 168 women aged 18-35, those who meditated before exposure to appearance-focused content did not experience a significant change in body dissatisfaction or negative mood after viewing the images, whereas the control group's scores worsened significantly. Both groups initially improved after listening to their respective audios, but only the meditation group sustained those improvements when faced with idealized images.

DOI: 10.3390/healthcare14010120 Full text China Xiaohongshu red Appearance-focused social media Body dissatisfaction +6

Brief Mindfulness Meditation Protects Chinese Young Women’s Body Image from Appearance-Focused Social Media exposure：An Online Randomised Controlled Trial

Xiaoxiao Zhang, Zixuan Zhang preprint

A brief ten-minute mindfulness meditation audio helped buffer young Chinese women against the negative effects of viewing idealized body images on social media. In an online randomized trial, 168 women aged 18–35 were assigned to either a mindfulness meditation or a natural history audio. After listening, both groups improved in body dissatisfaction and mood. However, when later exposed to idealized images on Xiaohongshu, only the meditation group maintained its improvements, while the control group's body dissatisfaction and mood worsened significantly. The findings suggest that even a short mindfulness intervention may protect against appearance-focused social media's adverse impacts.

DOI: 10.20944/preprints202510.1843.v1