The Association between Instagram Use and Depressive and Low Self-esteem Symptoms among Iranian Young Adults

Background and Objective: With the growing use of social media, researchers have investigated its impact on psychological well-being. Instagram, a photo sharing social media with more than 40 million Iranian users has features that may put the user in a comparative position with others, which may lead to depressive and low self-esteem symptoms. The aim of this study was to determine the association between depressive and low self-esteem symptoms and problematic Instagram usage in Iranian young adults. Materials and Method: This analytical cross-sectional study was an online survey conducted on 125 consecutive Iranian Instagram users in January 2019. All subjects were over 18 years old and university students. We assessed depressive symptoms using Beck Depressive Inventory-II and self-esteem level using Rosenberg questioner. We measured how much our participants used Instagram via the time spent feature of the Instagram application. Furthermore, we investigated the addiction and harmful habits of using Instagram by a modified version of Problematic Social Media Use (PSMU) questionnaire. For statistical analysis, SPSS (edition 16) software, and analysis of variance (ANOVA) and Chi-square tests were used. The Ethics Committee of Mashhad Islamic Azad University approved this study. Findings: The mean age of participants was 20.96 ± 2.61 years and 54.5% of them were female. Most of our participants were not married (85.6%). None of the demographic characteristics was associated with depression or low self-esteem. The mean daily Instagram usage was 111.24± 70.04 minutes. Instagram usage was significantly associated with depressive symptoms (p-value= 0.02). Low self-esteem showed a slightly significant relationship with Instagram usage (p-value= 0.07). Furthermore, 35.2 percent of participants used Instagram problematically. Significant relationships between problematic Instagram use and depressive and low self-esteem symptoms were observed (p-values= 0.016 and 0.004 respectively). Conclusion: Both duration of Instagram usage, and problematic Instagram usage were associated with depressive and low self-esteem symptoms. Our results imply that not only how much we use Instagram, but also how we use it affects our psychological well-being.

Keywords:

Instagram , Depression , Self-esteem