INSTAGRAM USAGE AMONG YOUTH COMPARING THEMSELVES WITH OTHERS

Abstract

Instagram has a very high number of monthly-active users that is more than 400 million, the number of shared faces is around 80 million and nearly about 3.5 likes daily. A high percentage of people post their lives on Instagram so that they can be viewed, seen and admired. This causes people to judge, comment and at times try to copy what they see on Instagram. Thus this comparing causes “mental health issues, anxiety, depression, lowered self-esteem and social-comparison”. As social media, Instagram, has become most important part of every individual especially among youth. It is important to study and analyze the impact that it brings among youth and culture it imparts. Instagram have grown rapidly in past few years. Its effects are yet unclear whether it is creating a sense of social-comparison among people and leading to mental health issues. The main idea of carrying out this study is to look for the effect of Instagram usage among individual, social depression/anxiety and comparing themselves with others. We have used the basics of social-comparison theory and Five-system model. We carried out a online-survey for this study (N=404). The whole set of data was transferred to SPSS software of Instagram users. The recent studies affirms and proves that the high usage of social platforms has major consequences as it leads to anxiety, stress and various health related issues. To lower the bad effects the research shows the role that self-esteem and social-comparison can play. The people with high self-esteem and tends to be less effected by social media usage. Thus proposes that to higher self-esteem could be used improve the social-comparison developed among youth. The research is aimed to find whether Instagram usage is leading youth towards social comparisons and to identify the correlation between factors, i.e. mental health and social comparison caused by Instagram usage. Also, it has been observed that social-comparison can cause mental health issues and colorism. As per studies nearly 88% of youth are engaged in social comparisons caused by Instagram and most of these are suffering with upward-comparison. Moreover, this research study suggests that there is a strong relation between 
Instagram usage and social comparison, causing mental health issues i.e social anxiety and depression. Instagram usage appeared to influence the psychological health of individual, the individuals with more usage faced higher mental issues and with high self-esteem the social comparison effect showed a change. The relationship between Instagram usage and social-comparison was studied and it regulated to extent as it created the direct relation among the users.”