Instagram or Insta-great? Social Media Browsing and Immediate Well-being and Self-Perceptions

• In Event: 3-155 - Social Media Use and Adolescent Adjustment: Considering Quality Over Quantity

Integrative Statement

Over 70% of adolescents report using Instagram (Anderson & Jiang, 2018), prompting questions about how it affects well-being. Researchers have proposed that self-focused use (i.e., browsing one’s own profile) can have positive effects, whereas other-focused use (i.e., browsing others’ profiles) can have negative effects due to the engagement of harmful social comparisons to the highly curated content others post online (Vogel & Rose, 2016). The current research examined how browsing real Instagram profiles can impact late adolescents’ affect and self-perceptions, and how these effects may depend upon social comparison orientation (SCO).

Participants included 185 ethnically diverse 18-19 year-old students from a large southwestern university (84% female; 29% White, 55% Asian, 11% Latino, 4% Black). Participants were randomly assigned to browse one of three Instagram profiles for ten minutes: their own, a chosen acquaintance, or an attractive stranger chosen by the researchers. Before and after browsing, participants reported on state self-esteem, positive affect, negative affect, appearance evaluation, sociability, self-confidence, and interpersonal negativity (see Figure 1). Following browsing, participants completed an 11-item measure of SCO (α=.83; Gibbons & Buunk, 1999).

MANOVA analyses demonstrated that affect and self-perceptions differed by condition for all except negative affect (all p’s<.01). The self condition differed from the stranger condition for all measures except negative affect, and differed from the acquaintance condition for appearance evaluation and sociability. T-tests revealed that browsing a stranger’s profile increased interpersonal negativity and decreased positive affect (Figure 1). Browsing one’s own content increased perceived appearance evaluation, perceived sociability, and self-esteem. SCO was tested as a moderator in relation to adolescents’ appearance evaluation, given that the visual orientation of Instagram may trigger harmful appearance-related social comparisons (Marengo et al., 2018). SCO moderated the effect of condition on appearance evaluation (F(2,178)=6.57, p=.002). Post-hoc analyses depicted in Figure 2 show that for appearance evaluation, there were significant differences between conditions among adolescents with higher SCO (F(2,105)=16.87, p<.001), but no difference by condition for those with lower SCO (F(2,77)=0.77, p=.49). Specifically, for adolescents high in SCO, those who viewed their own profile experienced higher levels of appearance evaluation relative to those who viewed the stranger’s profile, which t-tests revealed also differed from baseline (t(35)=3.64, p=.001 for self; t(36)=-4.48, p<.001 for stranger; t(32)=-1.45, p=.16 for acquaintance). Additionally, t-tests indicated that for those low in SCO, there were no changes in appearance evaluation from baseline for any condition (all p’s > .15).

These results extend previous research which suggests that browsing others’ social media content may be detrimental and browsing one’s own content may be beneficial (Vogel & Rose, 2016). Perhaps those with greater SCO who view their own highly curated Instagram photos perceive the self as more attractive than others via downward social comparison, whereas those who view an attractive stranger perceive the self as less attractive via upward social comparison. Those who are unlikely to make social comparisons while browsing (i.e., have a low SCO) do not see significant changes in their appearance evaluation, regardless of whose content they are browsing.

Authors

• Kaitlyn Burnell, The University of Texas at Dallas
  Presenting Author

• Madeleine George, University of Texas at Dallas
  Non-Presenting Author

• Allycen R Kurup, Purdue University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Marion K Underwood, Purdue University
  Non-Presenting Author