Discuss about the SocialMedia Instagram Usage in Workplace Around World.
Launched in October 2010, Instagram is a video and photo sharing application that has been owned by Facebook since 2012. This application has become a very important component and part of the lives of millions of people all across the world that uses this application. The majority of the people who use this application are of the age group of teenagers. More than providing connectivity and bringing people across different countries together, this application is used for obtaining information about the whereabouts of people using the application. The features of filters, tags and sharing to the preferred group of people add to the increased favor and use of this application. Further, being up to date with the new applications is very important and Instagram provides another such platform to showcase the lifestyle of people. Like any other social media application, Instagram creates an impact on the mental health of people and this paper investigates the very same effect. This paper tries to study the impacts of Instagram usage on the mental health of the users as well as their online and offline behaviors.
The use of social media is now directly proportional to the lifestyle being led by the people using the application. The users are sometimes able to review the usage of goods online and share their views, making the usage of social media even high. However, the usage of social media is always associated with the cost of mental illness for the users and it is reported in many studies that majority of the users in the developed countries especially suffer from conditions of schizophrenia, depression, spectrum disorder and bipolar disorder (Naslund et al. 2017). These effects are studied and evaluated in details in this study. Studies also posit and assert that the nature of friendships that are initiated online and offline vary and the lasting of friendships also greatly varies (Lu et al. 2017). The picture that is portrayed by the posts and the follow list on Instagram often deciphers the notion that the limits and boundaries to the level of friendship has extended. The condition of having an inordinate number of friends online and hardly anyone to lean back on in reality is the biggest cause of the mental illnesses mentioned above.
Instagram just like other social networking sites have its own adverse impacts on the users and especially on the young adults or teenagers who are a part of the virtual world and continuously tends to keep up to the social image formed. The research in this project is aimed at finding out the impacts of this social media platform on the mental health and essentially the effect on the concept of perfection of physical appearances that is perceived by the cohort of population using the application.
According to many studies, it has been noticed that the concepts of perfect physical appearances and friendships have greatly changed due to the use of Instagram which in turn has caused the impacts of depression, anxiety and trauma in most individuals. For example, it has been found that while online majority of the users of Instagram are anxious about the number of likes, the positive and negative comments and sometimes even the shares that they receive. While offline on the other hand, the same users become less restless and more calm and tranquil.
Self Objectification has become very common with the advent and the increased use of the application and patterns and trends suggest that this issue impacts women more than men. The notion of having a properly proportioned body and living up to the expectations of the ideal figure in society has been propelled by the usage of this application (Fardouly, Willburger and Vartanian 2017). This in turn has led to the issues of change in beliefs and concerns in women causing them to highly suffer from both anxiety and depression.
Studies have also asserted that Instagram usage by youth has led to increased levels of mental illness in them because of the open options of commenting and sharing of images without consent in certain cases (Kathryn 2014). As a matter of fact, Instagram is reported to be one of the biggest platforms where the exposure of photos and videos has caused wide amounts of depression and other mental illnesses.
Amanda Lee is a Canadian fitness model who has millions of followers of Instagram and uses pictures of her fit body to earn an average amount of five hundred dollars for each post. Kim K is another such celebrity who has over 10 million followers on Instagram and has earned a lot by posting the pictures of her perfect body on Instagram. The real life examples of these two celebrities on Instagram is very important because they are relevant to this study as they help in portraying the basic reason for the increased usage of Instagram from the tangent of having and earning love and respect for their perfect figures. Likewise, millions of young girls, women and even men around the world attempt to achieve such perfect bodies and sometimes even try earning out of such posts by making their profiles public. However, in majority of cases these attempts fail causing huge mental implications and negative impacts.
The method of data collection for this project used in this case is the primary collection of data in which data will be collected through the use of interviews and surveys. The cohort of individuals interviewed will consist of people who use Instagram on a daily or at least a weekly basis. Apart from analysis of this data collected, the use of textual and content analysis will also be implied for literature used as secondary data for this study. The major facts that will form the basis of the questions used for the primary survey and interview include the following enlisted perspectives:
The branch and section of philosophy that determines the rules and codes of conduct and behavior under different circumstances, form the pathway to ethical considerations in case of research that is primary (Daniel 2012). For this study, I made sure that the participants had their full consent in being questioned to different levels. Further, their identity was not exposed. The data was completely used for educational purposes and strictly protected. I also made sure that they were participating under full comfort and did not feel forced or persuaded to answer any question asked. The sample questioned consisted of individuals in the age group 17 to 25 years so that they are able to answer confidently bout themselves.
The interview and survey are conducted on people that use and utilize the features of Instagram frequently. A sample of three people was interviewed and the sample for the survey consisted of around twenty people. The analysis of the responses and patterns obtained from the interview and survey are evaluated herein.
Interview – The questions asked in the interview are enlisted as follows:
The general trend observed from the responses of the interviewees was that majority of the users belong to the age group of the youth and they generally use and access it on a daily basis for a period of one hour. They feel that it is the best way to connect and feel wanted and mheard as well as gain social attention. Responses also suggested that the users are often impacted negatively to different extents depending upon the issue of lack of attention or misuse of their posts or pictures and sometimes even less number of followers and friends.
The questions for the sample survey are attached in the Appendix of this paper. The following graphs represent the information received and the results generated from the sample survey.
The above graph represents the age group of individuals using Instagram and as it noticed, majority of the users vary in the age group of 17 to 25 and this age group comprises of the youth who are updated on a daily basis on the various social media applications
The above graph portrays that majority of the individuals surveyed were students and high school students and only few of the individuals belonging to the cohort of people surveyed were full time workers.
The frequency of usage of Instagram on a daily basis varies in the range of one to five hours with the majority of people using the application for a period of around Half an hour to one hour.
The reasons for using Instagram as a social media application are portrayed in the graph with majority of the users using the application for purposes of connecting with others, posting cool pictures, promoting one self and viewing others profiles and posts as an influence with a very small number of people using the application for their professional work.
As is portrayed in the graph above, majority of users on Instagram use the platform for showcasing an impression or image of oneself that varies widely from their real selves.
The above graph portrays the portion of individuals surveyed who care about the reviews and opinions of their posts and pictures and as is noticed in the graphs, majority of the people surveyed are affected and impacted by the opinions and comments.
This graph shows, the portion or section of people surveyed who post on Instagram to impress other people or gain attention of others and impress about the perfection of their physical appearances or even their lifestyles.
The responses from the individuals surveyed also show that although majority of the cohort have not been subject to scenarios of cyber bullying, a substantial portion of the individuals have faced instances of being bullied through different ways on Instagram.
The above graph portrays that majority of the individuals surveyed felt a feeling of content or satisfaction as the number of likes on their posts increased and the other way in case their posts were not liked or if those posts received negative comments.
The last graph shows the results from the last question asked that is majority of the individuals feel that their posts should be as good as or even better than the posts of their fellow friends on Instagram or the profiles of celebrities that they follow.
Thus the results portray that majority of the individuals who use Instagram as a major part of their social lives are young and are constantly in a race of proving the level of perfection of their lifestyles. Majority of these people use the application on a daily basis in spite of being exposed to the negative effects of bullying, lowering of self confidence and other mental illnesses including depression.
Conclusion
Thus, to conclude, it can be asserted that the implications of using Instagram just like other social media platforms for portraying the perfection and quality of lifestyle by the youth are adverse and often affect the mental health and the overall quality of life of these individuals. The individuals become prone to wrong notions of having a perfect figure or physical appearance failing which they start losing self confidence.
The use of Instagram should be lowered for this age group and they should be increasingly provided with counseling or workshops to reduce the level of depression, anxiety as well as self doubt and self objectification.
References
Daniel, O. (2012). SocialMedia Usage in the Workplace Around the World – Developing Lami and Practices. Business Law International, 13(2), 124-138.
Fardouly, J., Willburger, B.K. and Vartanian, L.R., 2017. Instagram use and young women’s body image concerns and self-objectification: Testing mediational pathways. New Media & Society, p.1461444817694499.
Kathryn, Z. (2014). Teens and Tech: What the Research Says. Young Adult Library Services, 12(2), 124-164.
Lu, D., Sang, J., Chen, Z., Xu, M. and Mei, T., 2017. Who Are Your “Real” Friends: Analyzing and Distinguishing Between Offline and Online Friendships From Social Multimedia Data. IEEE Transactions on Multimedia, 19(6), pp.1299-1313.
Naslund, J.A., Aschbrenner, K.A., McHugo, G.J., Unützer, J., Marsch, L.A. and Bartels, S.J., 2017. Exploring opportunities to support mental health care using social media: A survey of social media users with mental illness. Early intervention in psychiatry.
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