The impact of Instagram on young Adult's social comparison, colourism and mental health: Indian perspective

Social media is an interactive communication technology that eases the creation and sharing of information, ideas, and other forms of expression via ScienceDirect's AI-generated Topic Pages" class="topic-link" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-thickness: 1px; text-decoration-color: rgb(46, 46, 46); color: rgb(46, 46, 46); word-break: break-word; text-underline-offset: 1px;">virtual communities and networks. Instagram is a free ScienceDirect's AI-generated Topic Pages" class="topic-link" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-thickness: 1px; text-decoration-color: rgb(46, 46, 46); color: rgb(46, 46, 46); word-break: break-word; text-underline-offset: 1px;">social networking platform especially for youngsters, allowing users to upload and share photos/videos through a mobile app. Approximately 3.6 billion internet users are actively using ScienceDirect's AI-generated Topic Pages" class="topic-link" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-thickness: 1px; text-decoration-color: rgb(46, 46, 46); color: rgb(46, 46, 46); word-break: break-word; text-underline-offset: 1px;">social networking sites, and these numbers are still expected to grow as the increase in ScienceDirect's AI-generated Topic Pages" class="topic-link" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-thickness: 1px; text-decoration-color: rgb(46, 46, 46); color: rgb(46, 46, 46); word-break: break-word; text-underline-offset: 1px;">mobile device usage and social networks increasingly gain attraction. Instagram has around1158 a million active users worldwide, with 62.70% of users aged 18–34 years and 120 million active users in India as of October 2020. Social media sites such as Instagram, Facebook, as well as Twitter have penetrated deeply into the life of young individuals. According to research During adolescence, most of them are entirely immersed in the world of social media, which represents a sharp risk for the onset of mental illness, with nearly one in five adolescents suffering from diagnosable mental health concerns, such as depression and suicide. Filters and other augmented-reality tools allow you to shape-shift your faces more than ever and make you rethink your natural appearance. Artificial beautification due to filters significantly reduces an individual's self-confidence in their natural appearance and color as they tend to believe they will look ugly or less beautiful without the use of filters; this fear forces them to apply filters to be socially accepted.

Social comparison refers to individuals evaluating their appearance by comparing themselves with the thin sociocultural ideals of beauty presented in the media; almost always, this will constitute an upward comparison by which individuals fall short, resulting in dissatisfaction with their own body and appearance. Furthermore, individuals who already have ScienceDirect's AI-generated Topic Pages" class="topic-link" style="color: rgb(46, 46, 46); margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-thickness: 1px; text-decoration-color: rgb(46, 46, 46); word-break: break-word; text-underline-offset: 1px;">mental health issues or are anxious or uncertain about their body image are more likely to be affected by social comparison, resulting in further body dissatisfaction. The drive for self-evaluation causes people to seek out acceptance and comparisons with others who are similar rather than dissimilar. The primary source of comparison targets is peers rather than models or celebrities featured on social media. Individuals who use social media often may compare themselves to others to assess their opinions and abilities. It is predicted that social comparison and envy lead to depression. It is revealed that self-comparison on social media can have dire effects on physical and mental health as they give an individual the ability to seek approval and compare themselves. Thin-ideal media images presented in magazines or television indicate adverse effects of exposure to body dissatisfaction and ScienceDirect's AI-generated Topic Pages" class="topic-link" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-thickness: 1px; text-decoration-color: rgb(46, 46, 46); color: rgb(46, 46, 46); word-break: break-word; text-underline-offset: 1px;">disordered eating of adolescent and young adult women. A large number of likes/comments/follow led to reduced facial dissatisfaction for both thin-ideal and average images). The number of followers, likes, and comments plays a significant role in social acceptance; if an individual has a smaller number of followers, likes, and comments, it is more likely that the individual will think that their peers do not socially accept them and they will look for acceptance leading to social comparison and it will cause mental health issues such as anxiety and depression. Individuals often tend to copy or replicate influencers and celebrities to follow the trend for social acceptance.

Physical appearance is an important aspect of personal identity and its relation to oneself begins with the beginning of life. . Compared to other social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter, Instagram focuses on photos and videos and less text. Instagram's visual, photo-focused status encourages users to view and comment on other users' photos who display them on their profiles leading to social acceptance. .  A person's appearance can play an essential role in how other users view, like, and comment on these images. Physical discomfort is related to negative thoughts about a person. It includes feelings of inadequacy among the individuals. It has been an essential factor in promoting cosmetic surgery between women and men.

People with darker tones tend to be more influenced or pressured by new standards of beauty that are equated with the right skin tone. Ironically, many light-skinned and dark-skinned people who are trying hard to seduce them, want to get the wrong skin tone and tend to spend money and time on sunscreen studios and beaches. Dark-toned individuals tend to be more influenced or pressured by the new standards of beauty equated with fair skin tone. The irony is that many fair-skinned individuals whom the dark-skinned are trying hard to ape, want to get a dusky skin tone, they tend to spend money and time at tanning studios and beaches to get tanned ). Fortunately, because of the climate and the environment, the Indians have a healthy and beautiful dusky complexion with golden skin, but most Indians do not understand this and follow the trend of justice. Filters are used to look good in images which leads to low self-esteem. It is estimated that 61% of reported abuse is personal appearance.

While becoming inextricable to our daily lives, social media are blamed for increasing ScienceDirect's AI-generated Topic Pages" class="topic-link" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-thickness: 1px; text-decoration-color: rgb(46, 46, 46); color: rgb(46, 46, 46); word-break: break-word; text-underline-offset: 1px;">mental health problems in younger people. The World Health Organization reported that 10–20% of children and adolescents worldwide experience mental health problems. It is estimated that 50% of all mental disorders are established by the age of 14 and 75% by 18. The most common disorders in children and adolescents are ScienceDirect's AI-generated Topic Pages" class="topic-link" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-thickness: 1px; text-decoration-color: rgb(46, 46, 46); color: rgb(46, 46, 46); word-break: break-word; text-underline-offset: 1px;">generalized anxiety disorder and depression. The commonness of anxiety and depression has increased by 70% in the past 25 years in young people. the impact of social media on adolescents’ well-being has become a priority due to a simultaneous increase in mental health problems. Social media could be regarded as a 'double-edged sword. Studies show the benefits of enabling people to express their thoughts and feelings and to receive social support. According to the report published by the American Academy of Paediatrics, social media enable adolescent users to strengthen bonds with existing friends and to form new friendships online, which reduces ScienceDirect's AI-generated Topic Pages" class="topic-link" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-thickness: 1px; text-decoration-color: rgb(46, 46, 46); color: rgb(46, 46, 46); word-break: break-word; text-underline-offset: 1px;">social isolation and loneliness and indirectly improves mental health. It is believed that individuals with low social support are more likely to suffer from mental health problems (e.g. depression, anxiety, and psychological distress) compared to those with high social support from family, friends, and neighbors.  In most countries, it is estimated that most individuals in need of mental health services do not receive any treatment. With a wide range of the population actively using social media, there are numerous opportunities to use popular social media to improve the treatment, care, and services available to people living with mental illness. Instagram bullying is a significant issue where individuals post malicious or embarrassing photographs, write insulting captions, post hateful comments, use mean hashtags, create fake accounts/profiles, and most private and ScienceDirect's AI-generated Topic Pages" class="topic-link" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-thickness: 1px; text-decoration-color: rgb(46, 46, 46); color: rgb(46, 46, 46); word-break: break-word; text-underline-offset: 1px;">sensitive information publicly. These types of bullying hurt the brain leading to severe mental health issues.

In this paper, we present and discuss the results of a survey conducted to identify the psychological impact of Instagram on young adults for factors such as social comparison, colorism, and mental health. The main objectives of our research study were:

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To determine whether Instagram usage influences these factors on young adults.

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To determine whether gender plays a significant role in influencing factors such as social comparison, colorism, and mental health, based on recorded responses.

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To find the correlation between colorism, mental health, and social comparison.

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Provide meaningful information/suggestions highlighting further improvements that can be achieved based on the recorded response.

Based on the tests performed, we found a significant co-relationship between the impact of social comparison, colorism, and mental health. Structural equation modeling (SEM) and ANOVA tests were performed to identify the quantitative behavior and relationships between Instagram and three factors, social comparison, colorism, and mental health. SEM is preferred because it estimates the multiple and interrelated dependence in a single analysis. Furthermore, Cluster Density View for Statistical Analysis was constructed to understand the qualitative behavior. Qualitative analysis is prone to uncertainty and biasness when compared to traditional empirical analysis; we can still utilize these findings to understand our statistical findings further and complement them.

The use of social media during the pandemic has increased considerably. There have been many research studies published focusing on the mental health issues that arise in society. Use of social media, Loneliness is the significant reasons. With the changing generation and needs, our research study is best suited for the case and provides insightful implications based on the results obtained.

The structure of the paper is as follows - Section 2 provides the related work for our research study. Section 3 describes the detailed methodology and research design. Section 4 demonstrates the results and analysis. Section 5 discusses the research study.

Related work is:

This section gives a brief and detailed study of Social Comparison, Colourism, and Mental health factors and their effect on social media in general. To better understand and have a clear objective, the literature section is divided into three separate subsections viz. Social Comparison and social media, Colourism and social media, and then finally Mental Health and social media. The search criteria of the literature are given in section 2.1.