The Emotional Influences of Instagram on Mood and Self-Esteem: #Hashtag Mood

Abstract

Social Media is a rapidly growing entity with great influence that expands with each day. When we experience and interact with a phenomenon this pervasive, it is important to look at the effects of said phenomenon. The social media platform, Instagram, is the largest social media platform to date. A lot has been written about the nature and influences of social media and other social media platforms but there has been a gap in research on the influences Instagram on mood and self-esteem. The purpose of this research is to understand the uniqueness of Instagram and to identify the emotional influences of Instagram in order to inform effective and unproblematic usage. It was hypothesized that the positive/uplifting Instagram content would evoke positive mood states and higher feelings of self-esteem among Instagram users, and that negative/depressing Instagram content would evoke negative mood states and lower feelings of self-esteem when users were exposed to negative/depressing content. It was also hypothesized that in the condition containing both uplifting and depressing content, participants would generally lean toward one emotional state than the other, experiencing either higher self-reported mood and self-esteem states or lower mood and self-esteem states after being exposed to both positive and negative content than they had before seeing the Instagram content. The first two hypotheses were supported. Participants reported higher mood and self-esteem states after being exposed to positive Instagram content, and lower mood and self-esteem states after being exposed to negative Instagram content. However, the combined condition where participants saw both positive and negative Instagram content, did not represent a statistically significant lean towards a positive mood and self-esteem over a negative mood and self-esteem state, and vice versa. Keywords: Instagram, mood, self-esteem, emotion, uplifting, depressing