the moderating role of self-compassion in the relationship between the use of visual media and internalizing pathological symptoms in adolescents

Background: in the face of mistakes and individual shortcomings, self-compassion defines a positive and loving attitude of a person towards her or himself. as a consequence of this compassionate mindset, it is believed that people with high self-compassion experience better control over pathological internalization. the aim of this study was to investigate the moderating role of self-compassion in the relationship between the use of visual media and internalization of pathological symptoms in adolescents in the academic year 2019-2020. method: this study has a cross sectional and correlational research design. the statistical population included all high school students in shiraz, iran, who were randomly selected as a cluster of 300 students from educational areas one and two. to measure the studied variables, the questionnaire of self-compassion along with the strengths and difficulties questionnaire (sdq) were used. to analyze the data and hypotheses, review and compare the factors measured in students, chi-square tests, pearson correlation coefficient, and hierarchical regression were used at a significance level of 0.05. results: according to the demographic data, 162 (49.40 %) of the sample were female and (48.46 %) were male. the results showed that the variables of self-compassion and body image concern play a moderating role in the relationship between the use of visual media and internalization of pathological symptoms (β=0.296). conclusion: self-compassion and body image concern play a significant moderating role in the relationship between the use of visual media and the internalization of pathological symptoms.