• DOI:10.2991/UIPSUR-17.2018.19
• Corpus ID: 149459334

The relationship between social comparison and depressive symptoms among Indonesian Instagram users

@inproceedings{Gaol2018TheRB,
  title={The relationship between social comparison and depressive symptoms among Indonesian Instagram users},
  author={Las Asimi Lumban Gaol and Amira Budi Mutiara and Nimas Linggar Saraswati and Rizqika Rahmadini and Maulidia Annisa Hilmah},
  year={2018}
}

• Las Asimi Lumban Gaol, Amira Budi Mutiara, +2 authors Maulidia Annisa Hilmah
• Published 1 July 2018
• Psychology

Instagram is one of the most popular social media platforms in the world. In Indonesia, Instagram has more than 22 million monthly active users. However, its use may increase depressive symptoms due to negative social interaction, particularly social comparison. We hypothesized that social comparison was negatively correlated with depressive symptoms. Using an online questionnaire platform, 131 participants aged 18-28year-old were recruited. Depressive symptoms were measured using the Center of Epidemiological Studies Depression (CES-D) scale by Radloff (1977) and social comparison was measured with Social Comparison Rating Scale (Allan & Gillbert, 1995) adapted by Feinstein et al. (2013). A significant correlation between social comparison and depressive symptoms was found. Moreover, a significant correlation between percentage of strangers followed and social comparison was found, while the correlation between frequency of Instagram use and social comparison was not significant. These findings indicate that social comparison occurs in spite of various time spent in using Instagram and might occur more frequently with a higher number of strangers followed. Instagram users should become aware that Instagram could facilitate negative social comparison which may result in depressive symptoms, so they should use Instagram cautiously.