Psychological Effects for Instagram Followers

       Constantly being exposed to pictures of highly sexualized, disproportionally skinny but curvaceous, beautiful scantily clad women all day, every day is exhausting. Not only does it make you feel unsuccessful, it forces you to compare yourself to others in an extremely unhealthy way (Langlois, Roggman and Musselman, 1994). This has contributed to high reports of body dissatisfaction in female IG users (de Vries et. al, 2016). While we’ve already discussed plastic surgery instance on women, we haven’t fully delved into the negative impacts on the psyche. Not only are women less confident in their body shapes, skin colours and sizes, they actually report a higher statistic of depression, anxiety, compulsive behaviours, and even aggression towards other women (Thorsteinsson, 2014). From a social comparison perspective, strangers’ positive posts on social media are expected to negatively affect viewers’ emotions, but from an emotional contagion perspective, strangers’ positive posts should positively affect viewers’ emotions (de Vries et. al, 2016).

       Jealousy is the green-eyed monster nobody wants around, but that everybody experiences. However, for those who spend countless hours of the day staring at women with “better” lives, it’s something we’ve grown to live with on a daily basis. Depression and anxiety are often accompanied by feelings of inadequacy and a disconnect between reality and, well, paid advertisement (Vogel et. al, 2015). Instagram use was positively associated with depressive symptoms, and positive social comparison was significantly negatively associated with depressive symptoms (Fleck and Johnson-Migalski, 2015). Amount of strangers followed moderated the associations of Instagram use with social comparison (significantly) and depressive symptoms, and significantly moderated the indirect association of Instagram use with depressive symptoms through social comparison (Epstude and Mussweiler, 2009). People tend to present themselves in the most favourable light on social media and it's dangerous to compare someone else's "highlight reel" with your own journey to happiness.

How Image Content is Unfavourably Affecting Adolescents and Youth

       One of the most familiar forms of social infrastructure is Instagram. As parents, friends, and siblings we don't realize how large the negative impact Instagram content has on adolescents and youth. Just because social media sites have widespread popularity and growth, doesn't mean the various social platforms can be exercised in a healthy manner. Social media is now considered to be the norm, and is known as the "most common activity" of adolescents and youth. But the negative consequences of social media do not have to become the norm for adolescents and youth of today, as long as we can educate others on practices for mental wellness and positive body consciousness.

       Image content on Instagram could lead users to visualize themselves comparatively to the images posted. As previously stated, this can depend on the level of celebrity worship. "Celebrity worship has been linked to body dissatisfaction, a higher frequency of voluntary cosmetic surgery (Maltby and Day, 2011) and eating disorders (Shorter et al, 2008)". Most image content viewed propagates the overt sexualization of females, a concept that equates a woman's personal worth to her physical attractiveness. Sadly, a majority of this content is perpetuated by the postings of female celebrities. These posts are viewed by hundreds of millions causing mass global influence and affect of imagery promoting female sexualization. The pictures of the 'perfect' bodies and faces posted on Instagram also have a harmful effect on the education of many teenage girls. Eating disorders such as anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, and obesity are often a result of negative body image. Often the resultant feelings of inadequacy associated with negative body image will result in the development of eating disorders, mental illness, exhaustion, decreased social involvement, and weak performance in school.*

       Consequently, as a result of both male and female audiences, both genders end up with highly corrupted ideals, causing them to think that all females should look like society's impossible beauty standards suggest. Beauty standards include body structure and proportion, facial features, skin tone, clothing style, degree of sexuality, etc. This causes females to compare themselves to ridiculous standards, and whichever ways they don't match up with those standards will cause their self confidence levels to decrease, eventually leading to poor mental health development. Females in particular will feel pressured to take certain measures to change their physical appearance, in the hopes of boosting their confidence and self-esteem. Studies show that social media is the top influence when it comes to advertisements*. Instagram pictures and videos of the diverse gimmick products influence followers to spend money in order to achieve some desired attribute. This involves the purchase of beauty products, dressing in a different (often more sexualized) manner, and most worrying of all, undergoing plastic surgery to change physical appearance. The resulting sustained belief is that material objects and a traditionally beautiful appearance will lead to infinite happiness.