Photo by Solen Feyissa on Pixabay
Research has shown that social media comparisons can lead to increased anxiety and low self-worth. What if you compare yourself to a social media influencer—someone with a seemingly perfect life?
Socially anxious people view themselves as inferior to others or lower in social rank. These perceptions of inferiority can arise and strengthen when viewing Instagram “influencer” profiles, leading to lower self-esteem in socially anxious people, new UBC Psychology research suggests.
Carly Parsons
In a new study, Influencing emotion: Social anxiety and comparisons on Instagram, Carly Parsons, a graduate student in UBC’s department of psychology and first author of the study, found that when people compared themselves to others while browsing Instagram influencer profiles, the mood and self-esteem of socially anxious people were especially likely to deflate.
In a Q&A, Parsons discusses this research, why people compare themselves to others, and the implications of social comparisons on our well-being.
Can you tell us about this research?
The results of this research study demonstrated that, in a sample of young adults, those who were more socially anxious experienced greater declines in mood and self-esteem after browsing the profiles of Instagram “influencers.” These emotional outcomes were partially explained by lower perceptions of one’s social rank (i.e., perceptions of oneself as inferior to others), and by further decreases in perceived social rank during browsing.
How did the study work?
291 undergraduate students browsed the profiles of eight local (Vancouver-based) Instagram influencers, whose profiles had been effectively frozen in time so that each participant had access to the same profile content. Participants rated their positive affect, negative affect, and self-esteem at the beginning and end of the study. They also completed a measure of social comparison at the beginning of the study and after browsing each profile, yielding nine social rank scores in total. This allowed us to look at trajectories of change in participants’ social rank self-perceptions, and the impact of these on changes in their affect and self-esteem.
Why would someone with social anxiety view themselves as inferior to others on Instagram?
Cognitive-evolutionary theories of social anxiety, and the research based on those theories, suggest that socially anxious people tend to view their social worlds in terms of social rank and their own social ranks as relatively low. In general, research has shown that socially anxious individuals are more likely to compare themselves to others, and to perceive themselves as inferior to those other people. With this research, we have shown that this tendency generalizes to the online social world—or at least when browsing the profiles of Instagram influencers. As there are many dimensions on which we might compare ourselves to others, one direction for future research is to explore the key factors underlying these online comparisons (e.g., number of followers, physical attractiveness, perceived happiness).
What does this research tell us about the role social media has on our well-being?
Several prior studies have demonstrated that passive behaviours on social networking sites (e.g., browsing others’ profiles) can be detrimental to social and emotional well-being, and that this effect can be explained by social comparison. This research reinforces the role of social comparison during profile browsing, while contextualizing the direction and impact of comparison based on one’s individual characteristics. For instance, in this study, participants who were low in social anxiety actually rated their social rank higher over time. Perhaps for this reason, these participants were less negatively impacted in terms of their mood and self-esteem.
Why might we compare ourselves to others on social media?
There are many theories behind why we engage in social comparison, and many of the proposed reasons likely translate to the online social world. For example, we might engage in comparison to feel inspired, to feel good about ourselves, to get a sense of our relative strengths and weaknesses, or to determine how to increase or maintain our social standing. The motivations, nature, and impact of our social comparisons depend on many factors including our cultural context and individual characteristics, including but not limited to social anxiety. For better or for worse, opportunities for social comparison are plentiful on social media.
What are the real-life implications of your findings?
People with social anxiety can tend to gravitate to online social platforms over in-person interactions, as they feel more in control when interacting online. At the same time, some studies have shown that socially anxious individuals may be more likely to engage in passive than interactive behaviours when on social networking sites. Unfortunately, these passive behaviours can have negative emotional outcomes, and our findings suggest that socially anxious people may be more susceptible to those outcomes. In turn, these outcomes (e.g., low mood, feeling inferior) may lead to further social avoidance, thereby maintaining social anxiety.
