Social Comparison as a Predictor of Self-Esteem Amongst Instagram-Using Students during the Covid-19 Pandemic

Abstract


 
 
 Self-esteem is based on positive or negative evaluations of oneself, whereas social comparison is the effort of defining oneself through comparison with other people. Online social comparison is different from offline social comparison. An individual’s self-esteem can be predicted from their interactions on social media through social comparison. This research aims to understand the idea of self-esteem amongst the Instagram users. In the process, this study explores the idea of comparison, and evaluates the social comparison as a predictor of self-esteem. This research uses descriptive and predictive methods, with a population of 2016 students of the Faculty of Psychology Education of the State University of Malang. The sample was taken using the saturation sampling technique or census. The research uses the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale and the Iowa-Netherlands Comparison Orientation Measure. The data were further analysed with a descriptive analysis technique using mean value, whereas the hypothesis test uses the simple linear regression technique. The results show that Ho is rejected with a significance level of 0.000, R-value of 0.382, and R-squared value of 0.146, which implies that social comparison contributes towards the existence of self-esteem by 14.6%.
 Keywords: Social comparison, self-esteem, college students