Abstract
Social networking sites (SNSs) may be transforming young people's social experiences, and browsing SNSs in particular may harm psychological well-being. However, browsing different types of SNS profiles may differentially relate to psychological well-being. In a large and ethnically diverse sample of emerging adults (N = 405), this experimental study examined changes in state affect and self-perceptions after browsing one of three different types of profiles on Instagram: an acquaintance, an influencer, or one's own profile. Moreover, this study investigated how individual characteristics may moderate relations between browsing and well-being, by exploring feedback seeking behaviors and the fear of missing out. Browsing one's own Instagram profile led to positive changes in psychological well-being, whereas browsing the profile of either an acquaintance or an Instagram influencer led to negative changes in psychological well-being. Many observed effects, especially those found for the acquaintance and influencer conditions, were moderated by participants' dispositional levels of the fear of missing out and feedback seeking, in which effects were primarily observed for those higher in these characteristics. Findings suggest that SNSs may have positive or negative effects on well-being depending on who is online and what those individuals are browsing.
Highlights
Specialty section: This article was submitted to Digital Impacts, a section of the journal Frontiers in Human Dynamics
Browsing one’s own Instagram profile led to positive changes in psychological well-being, whereas browsing the profile of either an acquaintance or an Instagram influencer led to negative changes in psychological well-being
Empirical evidence suggests that younger adults are more likely to report experiencing fear of missing out (FoMO) (Przybylski et al, 2013; Blackwell et al, 2017). As it is well-established in experimental studies that the negative effects of browsing are exacerbated for those who engage in social comparison (Vogel et al, 2015; Weinstein, 2017; de Vries et al, 2018; Alfasi, 2019), we focused on FoMO in the current research, which has yet to be explored as a moderator
Summary
Specialty section: This article was submitted to Digital Impacts, a section of the journal Frontiers in Human Dynamics. Browsing one’s own content can have positive effects, whereas browsing others’ content can have negative effects (Vogel and Rose, 2016) In this experiment, we examined how browsing one’s own Instagram profile, the profile of an acquaintance, Instagram and Well-Being and the profile of an Instagram influencer affected emerging adults’ psychological well-being. Viewing one’s own positive selfpresentation may have positive effects on well-being, perhaps through self-affirmation (Vogel and Rose, 2016), or by operating as a digital photo album (e.g., Budenz et al, 2020), in which users can re-view their saved old photos at the touch of a button
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