Introduction
Advancements in technology and social networking sites have been profoundly incorporated into the lives of people. According to ScienceDirect, In the world, there are close to one billion people who use Instagram, and there are more than 500 million people who use the social media site on a daily basis (Rejeb et al., 2022). Research shows that social media can negatively affect the ability to socialize and low self-esteem in the outside world (Avci et al., 2022). Instagram is one of the most addictive tools that allows the ability to showcase our daily lives in the form of sharing pictures and videos with the world, which gets people’s attention (Avci et al., 2022). Due to the popularity of various social media sites, it has become an addiction for young kids (Avci et al., 2022). It affects their academic performance, causes loneliness, and most likely gives them anxiety in daily life because of isolation from the outside world (Avci et al., 2022). The addition of social media sites has raised a lot of concerns, and various researchers have focused on investigating the implications and aspects that cause this kind of behavior.
There are many studies that have highlighted and researched the frequency of engagement between human beings and social networking sites like YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter (Allahverdi, 2022). Little research has been done on how addictive Instagram is nowadays due to the popularity of this site among young adults. Every social networking site has distinctive characteristics, unique features, and different gratifying motives. It is important to focus on investigating the addictiveness of Instagram based on these factors. Social media platforms continue to attract more people, especially teenagers, and previous studies have investigated the effects of these sites on the academic well-being of students, like how they perform in school, social anxiety, despair, and life gratification.
While this literature has focused on the effects of using social network sites, preventive policies and measures need to be undertaken to prevent the growth of the negative effects of social media among young people, especially those attending universities. According to research done previously on social media networking sites, mental health, and behavioral issues in teenagers are the direct result of using social media for very long hours and sacrificing their daily physical activities (Social Media and Depression: A Review – ProQuest, n.d.). Therefore, the findings of this study enable parents, policymakers, and other practitioners to develop guidelines that will be used to reduce the addiction to Instagram among university students by developing agendas that will stimulate physical activity.
Statement of Purpose
This paper will focus on exploring Instagram addiction among young adults. In order to examine this aspect of Instagram addiction, the study will explore the many different features of Instagram that are causing these young individuals to spend long hours on the app. It will also examine different age groups and conduct surveys on what people think their life would have been like without Instagram and how their life has been affected by the excessive use of Instagram. The individuals will have ages that range between 18 years to 30 years and will be from different backgrounds to ensure that the research is diverse. Some aspects that will be investigated in the study are how Instagram addiction results in depression and social anxiety, how it affects academic performance among students, and life satisfaction.
Literature Review
Needs and Instagram addiction.
Many young adults fall victim to the social comparison problem on social media; they compare their abilities and qualities to the other individuals on social media that seem better to them than themselves; this is called upward comparison(Krause et al., 2019). The researchers also examined that young people establish their own identity through the approval of other people. The students share live-stream videos and pictures for others to like and comment on. Therefore, these activities make people spend a lot of time on this platform, making a minority of the users addicted. These activities also make young people compare themselves with others which can result in low self-esteem.
Compared to the usability characteristics of Instagram and other social media platforms like YouTube and Twitter, which can be considered sites where people can find information, Instagram serves a different purpose. For example, Twitter is a better site for obtaining information since it has text-based data, while Instagram emphasizes visual image sharing (Faelens et al., 2019). Subsequently, other platforms are better for acquiring information; therefore, the information needs do not lead to addiction to Instagram. The results of the study indicated that social necessities were associated with addiction to Instagram.
Social media plays a critical role in connecting teens to new friends(Lenhart, 2015). Beyond making new friends, social media is a major way that teens interact with their friends (Lenhart, 2015). More than nine-in-ten teens (94%) say they spend time with friends on social media(Lenhart, 2015). The duty to reply to peers and social requests becomes very onerous to the students, and this aspect can make them spend much time on Instagram to acquire social support, making some of them Instagram addicts. Another aspect that can contribute to Instagram addiction is when the students want to experience social fulfillment in order to improve a sense of belonging. For instance, when people post photos on social media, they want to fulfill their entertainment gratifications.
The implications of Instagram addiction
An aspect of this study that is constant with the earlier studies is that Instagram obsession negatively impacts students’ academic performance. In addition, the students will need more time to study, negatively affecting their academic performance. This study will examine how academic performance positively impacts students’ life satisfaction. Therefore, academic performance can be essential in fulfilling the students’ life satisfaction.
The adverse associations between Instagram obsession and despair can be elucidated through social competition and feelings of resentment, and these aspects lead to depression. Attractiveness is another aspect that can lead to depression, whereby students who feel they are not attractive can easily become depressed (Limniou et al., 2021). This falls back to the category of comparison, where they compare themselves with what they see on social media sites. This also explains that young students feel that they are not attractive and good-looking compared to what they see on Instagram posts that people share from their daily lives with filters; it is the main reason for their depression and feeling down.
Conclusion
In conclusion, this proposal has exclusively explained the negative side effects of social media platforms, especially Instagram. It is not possible to tell university students to refrain from using Instagram despite the negative aspects that come with it. On a positive note, Instagram, like any other social media platform, enables people to be connected and maintain strong bonds and relationships. Studies listed in this proposal show the different negative aspects of Instagram. We need a proper study on the negative effects of Instagram and the destruction that comes with it on one’s future. In order to do that, this study is going to create surveys among students and different young adult groups from diverse backgrounds that use Instagram on a daily basis. The focus will be on how their lives are affected due to the excessive use of Instagram.
Methodology
The researchers gained approval from the university’s ethics committee before starting to carry out the research. Before the participants were allowed to participate in the study, they were given a consent form and a sheet containing their information. The information sheets contained details about the study, like the study’s objective and the reasons why the participants were allowed to participate. For the participants to be allowed to participate in the study, they were to be over 18 years old, must have an Instagram account, and must have been diagnosed with depressive symptoms (Limniou et al., 2021). The participants were informed that they could withdraw from the study at any time without giving any reason if they wished to do so. After the participants gave their consent, they could complete the online questionnaires. The questionnaires were advertised on the social media networks of the researchers and the School of Psychology department.
The first-year students were able to gain experience in research by taking part in the research studies. The process used in the research ensured that participants of various ages could participate. The research was conducted over two months, from December 2019 to January 2020, and 135 individuals could complete the online questionnaires (Limniou et al., 2021). At the beginning of the questionnaire, the participants were asked whether they were mostly on Instagram or Facebook based on how they spent 75% of their time. The research showed a margin error of plus or minus 7.2% from a population of 500 users. Based on how the researchers responded to the questionnaires, it was discovered that 66 participants were Instagram users and 69 were Facebook users. Seventy-nine participants were aged between 18 and 30 years, and 56 were aged 31 years and above. In the study, 43 males and 92 males took part.
In the first part of the questionnaire, there were ten items that were included whereby the participants were asked about the importance of their social media platforms and their motivation for using social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram. In this part, the researchers wanted to gather the age and gender of the participants, the number of friends the participants have on Facebook and the number of followers on Instagram, and the main reasons why the students were using social media sites. The next part of the questionnaires validated items about how the individual feelings of the participants with social media connected with their psychological well-being.
Rosenberg’s self-esteem scale was made of ten items that assessed positive and negative feelings. There were five items that consisted of five positive worded questions, and the other five items consisted of negative ended questions like, at times, I feel useless on social platforms like Instagram (Limniou et al., 2021). There were 20 items of the UCLA loneliness scale used to measure the subjective feelings of loneliness among the participants. The scale was both positive (” I feel happy when my friends are around me”) and negatively worded, like, (“I no longer want to be closer to people”). In this part, the participants gave their responses as either never or often. The scores of loneliness ranged from 20 to 80, whereby high degrees indicated high levels of loneliness.
The Center for Epidemiological Depression Scale was made of 20 items on how the participants in the last week experienced depression, like lack of sleep and appetite. There were four positive-worded questions (“I am happy”) and 16 negative-worded questions (“I hate when people are around me”): the responses the participants were expected to give included rarely and occasionally, or all the time. The scores of depression were ranging from zero to sixty (Limniou et al., 2021). Lastly, the Bergen Social Media Addiction Scale was used to evaluate how the users were addicted to social media in the last 12 months. This scale was developed based on the six basic symptoms of addiction: modification withdrawal, tolerance, relapse conflict, and salience. Some questions included how often you were relentless or felt bad when prohibited from using social media. The responses expected included rare or always.
References
Krause, H.-V., Baum, K., Baumann, A., & Krasnova, H. (2019). Unifying the detrimental and beneficial effects of social network site use on self-esteem: A systematic literature review. Media Psychology, 24(1), 10–47. https://doi.org/10.1080/15213269.2019.1656646
Limniou, M., Ascroft, Y., & McLean, S. (2021, October 13). Differences between Facebook and Instagram Usage in Regard to Problematic Use and Well-Being. SpringerLink. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s41347-021-00229-z#citeas
Faelens, L., Hoorelbeke, K., Put, J. V., Cambier, R., Putte, E. V. D., Raedt, R. D., & Koster, E. H. W. (2021, July). The relationship between Instagram use and indicators of mental health: A systematic review. ResearchGate. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/353518130_The_relationship_between_Instagram_use_and_indicators_of_mental_health_A_systematic_review
Rejeb, A., Rejeb, K., Abdollahi, A., & Treiblmaier, H. (2022). The big picture on Instagram research: Insights from a bibliometric analysis. Telematics and Informatics, 73, 101876. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tele.2022.101876
Avci, U., Karaoglan Yilmaz, F. G., & Yilmaz, R. (2022). Parental attitude and Instagram addiction: The mediating role of obsessive‐compulsive disorder. Psychology in the Schools. https://doi.org/10.1002/pits.22796
Social media and depression: A review – ProQuest. (n.d.). Www.proquest.com. https://www.proquest.com/docview/2159157100?accountid=14541&parentSessionId=1RSYBGxKK%2Bi3iU7QjYQlCU9uPucY%2BoLFYc44oCFwqvQ%3D&pq-origsite=primo
Lenhart, A. (2015, August 6). Chapter 4: Social Media and Friendships. Pew Research Center: Internet, Science & Tech; Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2015/08/06/chapter-4-social-media-and-friendships/
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