Adolescents Like Instagram! From Secret Dangers to an Educational Model by its Use Motives and Features: An Analysis of Their Mind Maps

Abstract

This study investigates the adolescents’ perceptions toward Instagram as a social network site via their mind maps and tries to understand this social phenomenon that affect them by its use motives and features. It also offers a general profile of social network site use among adolescents. Data were collected from 540 adolescents majoring in high schools of Turkey. The participants created their mind maps on Instagram in the visual arts course. Qualitative data were resolved using thematic analysis. Results highlighted the popularity of Instagram among adolescents. According to their mental images on Instagram, we found four categories: “communication and interaction,” “knowledge acquisition,” “entertainment and sharing,” and “negative effects of Instagram.” In addition to their positive perceptions toward Instagram, the majority of adolescents focused on the negative effects such as addiction, mood disorders, narcissistic acts, and ethics violations. Based on the findings, we also suggested a theoretical model for educational use of Instagram and directions for future research.

Keywords

Instagram adolescents social media use mind maps addiction educational technology

Introduction

Today, most of the youngsters cannot spend a day without browsing the social network sites (SNSs), which is an integral part of their lives. Especially, as a global and social phenomenon, Facebook has experienced a big boom with its popularity among SNSs since 2004. With 2.4 billion monthly active users in the second quarter of 2019, it is still one of the most popular SNSs around the world (Statista, 2019). Therefore, to date, the majority of research has more specifically focused on the use of Facebook (Assunçao & Matos, 2017; Feng et al., 2019). However, nowadays, the younger generation has leaned toward Instagram actively, thanks to its attractive and enhanced visual functions, even if they have a Facebook account (Shane-Simpson et al., 2018).

Recent statistics have shown that Instagram has more than one billion daily active users (Global Digital Report, 2019), and most of its active users are the youngsters who are the largest group of them (Seetharaman, 2015). Anyone who has the internet connection can easily access Instagram. It is one of the most visual-dependent SNSs (Doleck et al., 2017). Thanks to its many visual features, Instagram allows its users to share, view, and comment on photos, videos, and stories; publish their daily lives, memories, and emotional status as visuals or in texts; make a friend or continue existing relationships; and interact with the other people from all around the world (Lee et al., 2015; Shane-Simpson et al., 2018).

As the influence of Instagram has been growing, it has begun to attract the attention of educational researchers, especially in higher education (AlGhamdi, 2018; Çakmak, 2019; Shafer et al., 2018). A variety of studies have found that fewer youngsters use social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram for educational or academic purposes, and most of the youngsters prefer to use them for socializing and communication (Prescott et al., 2015). While several scholars have highlighted that Instagram is a potential social media proper for formal and informal learning (Gonulal, 2019), others have warned against its negative effects such as narcissism, waste of time, stress, eating disorder, antisociality, and discrete emotions such as anger and sadness (Lup et al., 2015; Sheldon & Bryant, 2016; Waterloo et al., 2017).

In addition to these complicating issues, there is a paucity of research on theoretical and practical models about how to integrate social media environments into learning process by reducing their negative effects on students. Therefore, there are very few studies that have theorized Instagram use both inside and outside the classroom. Others have focused on social, psychological, or consumer-based factors rather than educational context. The fact is that most of the educators do not have enough information for social media-based learning. Moreover, no study has drawn a theoretical or empirical picture by using the mind maps (MMs) that profoundly reveal the images of brain as a strong tool. Furthermore, adolescents remain as an unstudied sample in this sense. Research evidence shows that Instagram offers both benefits and risks for adolescents. In this respect, the current study can contribute to understanding the underlying factors for adolescents’ Instagram use along with its specific use and to the existing literature by addressing to this platform.

While Instagram helps its users communicate and interact by means of its potential, there is a global concern that the users can become an addict to this social phenomenon because of problematic Instagram use. Considering its outstanding effects on the social lives of people, especially of the youngsters, it is worth exploring these concerns to reveal their mental images in depth via the MMs. Despite increasing attention among them, little is known about the reasons for its popularity within theoretical context. Therefore, in the current study, the MMs were used to better understand the adolescents’ perceptions about Instagram, including its use motives and features. As an active learning strategy, the MM facilitates the learning process, helps meaningful learning, encourages brainstorming, and promotes the ability of mind natural to creative, critical, and radiant thinking (Buzan & Buzan, 2010; Davies, 2011). It includes several formats such as words, phrases, images, diagrams, symbols, colors, and branches extending from a central idea, including the connections among concepts with its visuals (Buzan & Buzan, 2006).

Moreover, the MM that is a potential tool for educational purposes enables to explore or imagine the relationships of concepts by using radial hierarchy. It facilitates learning, remembering, and associating between concepts or ideas (Buzan & Buzan, 2010). The MM naturally provides comprehensive ground for concepts rather than a superficial and restricted structure such as concept maps (Davies, 2011). The aim of the MMs is to explore the creative ideas, reach in-depth knowledge or schema, and organize the conceptual content (Buzan & Buzan, 2006). It helps to construct the new ideas by activating prior schemas or existing knowledge in the brain. With its powerful advantages, we focused on the MM as a data collection tool to reveal in depth the mental images of adolescents on Instagram concept. Hence, the negative and positive drivers of Instagram use can also be revealed in this study, including the underlying sociopsychological factors of their traits.

The research article is organized in five sections. The next section draws an overall framework of the literature about Instagram, its possible effects on adolescents, and the affordances of its educational use. Then, the implementation process of the present study within the methodological context is presented. This is followed by a section that elaborately includes the findings with the analyses of MMs. In the Discussion and Conclusions section, we argued the findings and suggested an educational model of Instagram use for theory and practice, and in the final section, the limitations of the study and the directions for future research are discussed.

Background

What Is Instagram as a SNS?

Instagram was originally established by Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger and launched in October 2010. Facebook included Instagram by buying it in 2012. The users can share their posts on both social sites at the same time. It speedily gets credit among adolescents and adult youngsters, thanks to the popularity of editing and sharing high-quality images or short videos (15 seconds) instantly without any extra program (Lup et al., 2015). It is important to post quality photos on Instagram rather than the quantity of photos (Shafer et al., 2018). Instagram allows adding several functions such as filters, hashtags, captions, tags, or locations to contents or posts (Al-Ali, 2014). Although it is easy to use on mobile devices such as tablet computer and smart phone, Instagram unlike Facebook or Twitter has limited features to be used on a desktop or notebook computer.

As a popular SNS over the past decade, Instagram is preferred to share particularly stunning visuals by manipulating with filters and other editing options and comment on or like other users’ photos or videos (Lee et al., 2015). Instagram creates a different visual-based culture with the rule of pictures first, texts second which makes it unique (Lee et al., 2015). It allows creating an account as public or semipublic and therefore helps to introduce ourselves to others.

Instagram Use and its Effects for Adolescents

Today’s adolescents who are referred to as “net generation” (Oblinger & Oblinger, 2005) or “digital natives” (Prensky, 2001) heavily use information and communication technologies and cannot imagine a life without them (Cotten et al., 2011). Adolescence is a crisis period during which personality formation and developmental changes such as physical, social, and emotional changes take place (Erikson, 1968). Most of all, adolescents are one of the most enthusiastic users of Instagram (Sherman et al., 2018). Many users rely on image-based platforms such as Instagram as a self-presentation tool to express themselves and create their virtual identities (Kim et al., 2017). It enhances the feelings of intimacy or engagement in comparison to text-based platforms such as Twitter.

Theoretically, with respect to uses and gratifications (U&G) approach, most scholars have highlighted the following underlying factors for using Instagram: social interaction, documentation, information sharing, archiving, self-expression, escapism, peeking, surveillance, diversion, and creativity (Anita & David, 2013; Lee et al., 2015; Sheldon & Bryant, 2016). On the other hand, several researchers have discussed the Instagram use within the scope of technology acceptance model (i.e., perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness; Doleck et al., 2017). Kim and Kim (2019) underlined those technological attributes for its use: visual elements, recommendation algorithm, privacy settings, openness, and simultaneousness. Seidman (2013) indicated that it satisfies the psychological mechanisms including the need of self-presentation and sense of belonging. Furthermore, Instagram use is related to motivation (Lin & Lu, 2011) and planned behavior (Kim, 2016) theories.

Instagram has sociopsychologically positive and negative sides (Mantymaki & Islam, 2016). Its effects on users’ behaviors have a distinct importance in the adolescence period in which personality and physical appearance begin to shape. Moreover, adolescents influence reciprocally one another with their behaviors on Instagram (Sherman et al., 2018). With respect to its positive side, it enables broadly several benefits such as social contact, socializing, maintaining the relationships, interaction with others, and self-promotion (Prescott et al., 2015; Seidman, 2013). Trifiro (2018) revealed that Instagram use has the potential to enhance the users’ well-being and self-esteem. While there is a paucity of literature on Instagram use, few of the current studies revealed its potential for learning process (AlGhamdi, 2018; Gonulal, 2019). Lup et al. (2015) posited that Instagram posts are generally more positively biased than other SNS posts such as those on Facebook. However, as Instagram has become an important part of its users’ lives, the researchers have recently focused on its negative social and psychological effects such as exhibitionism, voyeurism (Mantymaki & Islam, 2016), cyberbullying (Hosseinmardi et al., 2014), antisociality (Arntfield, 2015), depression, and stress (Lup et al., 2015) on them. It is a fact that the adolescents are at risk of becoming social media addicts and use Instagram in problematic ways. With respect to social comparison tendency, Kleemans et al. (2018) found that Instagram photos have a negative effect on the body image of adolescents, especially of girls.

Furthermore, some adolescents who want to attract others’ attention may tend to broadcast their photos to large audiences. These tendencies may lead to the strengthening of narcissistic acts (Jin & Muqaddam, 2018). Moreover, after seeing others’ happiness or well-being in the posts, some adolescents who do not like them can be sadder, more stressful, or more envious as an additional outcome of social comparison. The reasons such as the scarcity of likes or followers on Instagram, low-quality selfies, stalking others, the fear of disfavor, and loneliness can sometimes affect their psychological mood. More important, the adolescents spend and waste more time on Instagram than others do (Alhabash & Ma, 2017; Sheldon & Bryant, 2016). Therefore, these adolescents can be academically unsuccessful and have time management problems in their lives.

In the light of this information, it is important to explore the effects of Instagram on adolescents’ traits or lives and the reasons for its use with a great popularity among adolescents. The study investigates the adolescents’ perceptions toward Instagram as a type of SNS via their MMs and to understand this social phenomenon that affect them by its use motives and features. Hence, the research question was “How Instagram use motives and features affect adolescents according to mental images of adolescents?”

Method

Participants

The sample included 540 adolescents (329 females, 211 males) from the different grades of high schools in three provinces of Turkey (aged from 14 to 19 years, M_age = 16.62, SD_age = .15). Of all the participants, 136 (25.19%) were freshmen, 135 (25%) sophomores, 144 (26.67%) juniors, and 125 (23.25%) seniors in the high schools. Table 1 shows the distribution of gender across the grades of participants.

Table 1.

Distribution of Gender Across the Grades of Participants.

Grades	9th	10th	11th	12th	Total
Female	84	78	96	71	329
Male	52	57	48	54	211
Total	136	135	144	125	540

Data Collection and Procedure

Demographic form was used to collect adolescents’ personal information and included (a) gender, (b) grade, and (c) age.

Survey form was used to reveal the profiles of adolescents’ SNS use. For this, we asked them three questions: (a) Which SNSs do you have a membership of? (b) What is your favorite or primary SNS? (c) How much time do you spend on your favorite or primary SNS per day?

MM was used to determine in depth the adolescents’ mental images on Instagram. The MM, based on revealing students’ prior knowledge or schema, is a visual means for creative thinking strategy in education. To create the MMs of adolescents, we guided the criteria of Buzan and Buzan (2006). The MMs consist of the elements such as keywords, colors, branches, figures, and images. The process begins by placing a key idea in the center of the white paper or screen. The branches are added from the central focus. Whereas the primary branches from the main focus are written in bold, secondary branches addressing the subideas are written in thin. The keywords or figures are written in the branches and then the curves or arrows are linked with concepts or shapes. The MMs are widely used as a data collection tool in qualitative, quantitative, and mixed method research (Wheeldon & Faubert, 2009). Figure 1 shows the implementation procedure of this study.

Figure 1.

The Implementation Procedure of This Study.

The ethic approval was received from National Education Directorates of three provinces in Turkey. Data were collected during a period from March to July in 2019. In this study, the participants, initially, completed the demographic and survey form (4–6 minutes). The participants were informed about the purpose of the study and the duration of the survey, and their consents were received for the application. Second, the process of creating the MM took about one lesson hour (45 minute). Figure 2 shows the samples of their MMs on Instagram. Each adolescent was initially coded as A1, A2, A3, and so forth in the data encoding process. Moreover, the individual information—such as the names, surnames, and Instagram usernames on the mental images created by adolescents—was blurred and kept confidential in the findings section to maintain the ethical standards.

Figure 2.

The Samples of Adolescents’ MMs on Instagram (A34, A432).

We selected the MMs as a data collection tool for this study due to several reasons. The MM allows to explore the depths of adolescents’ mental images about Instagram and interrelated concepts or schemas. Prior to the implementation process, we introduced the MMs to students with samples and practices. Then, as a practice, each participant created an example MM in the visual arts course (45–60 minutes). To develop the maps, we preferred the visual arts course because of the suitability of the workplace (drawing tables, equipment such as colored pencils, various paper types). Some adolescents created their MMs in picture format without constraint. These MMs were found suitable for data analysis due to some key concepts on Instagram (see Figure 8).

Data Analysis

The descriptive statistics (frequency, percentage) were used to reveal the general profile of the participants’ SNS use. The data obtained from the MMs and the answers given to the questions in the survey form were resolved by using thematic analysis. For this, Braun and Clarke’s (2006) procedure was followed: (a) familiarizing yourself with your data, (b) generating initial codes, (c) searching for themes, (d) reviewing themes, (e) defining and naming themes, and (f) producing the report.

The data were transcribed to an appropriate level of detail on a MS Word document. We examined the 5,972 images and 7,140 words on the MMs. Each image was regulated as a word, and the data were coded as a stage of qualitative analysis. Codes, classified according to similar characteristics, were collected under the proper themes. In this study, the generated codes and themes along with their frequencies were summarized in tables. The frequencies of codes were reported under each theme due to the large sample size of our study.

To enhance credibility and trustworthiness of this study (Lincoln & Guba, 1985), the adolescents provided a long-term participation, especially in the design process of their MMs; the different types of data collection tools such as open-ended questions and MMs were utilized to obtain deeper knowledge; and research procedures were presented in detail due to the difficulty of generalizability of qualitative research. To support the findings, we reported directly some quotations from the adolescents’ MMs. In the qualitative analysis results, the subthemes were determined according to the common features of images and texts on the MMs. Moreover, four academicians also evaluated independently from the researchers. According to Miles and Huberman’s (1994) interrater reliability formula, the concordance between the coders was .91%. The data obtained from the survey form were analyzed as well as those obtained from the MMs.

Results

Adolescents’ SNSs Use Profiles (Preliminary Analysis)

Which SNSs Do You Have a Membership Of?

When asked to have a membership of SNSs, 401 (74.26%) of respondents were Facebook member, 388 (71.85%) WhatsApp, 352 (68.18%) Instagram, 323 (59.81%) YouTube, 176 (32.59%) Twitter, 162 (30%) Snapchat, 53 (9.81%) Telegram, 44 (8.15%) Tinder, 36 (6.67%) Periscope, 26 (4.81%) Google Plus, 18 (3.33%) Pinterest, 11 (2.04%) Flickr, 6 (1.11%) Tumblr, 5 (0.93%) Twitch, and 2 (0.37%) Vine. A total of 59 (10.93%) students also had no SNS account.

What Is Your Favorite or Primarily SNS?

When asked to specify their favorite SNS, while the majority of adolescents selected Instagram (n = 144), others selected YouTube (n = 127), WhatsApp (n = 108), Facebook (n = 57), Snapchat (n = 30), Twitter (n = 11), Tumblr (n = 2), and Twitch (n = 2). A total of 59 respondents also had no social media account. It was concluded that most of the students expressed that Instagram was the most popular platform among social media networks. Figure 3 shows the distribution of adolescents’ favorite SNSs.

Figure 3.

Distribution of the Adolescents’ Favorite SNSs.

How Much Time Do You Spend on SNSs Per Day?

When asked to reveal the time spent on SNSs, 16% of adolescents spent 10 minutes or less, 41% spent between 10 and 30 minutes, 35% spent 1 to 2 hours, and 8% spent 2 hours or more on the SNS per day.

Instagram’ Use Motives and Features Affect Adolescents by Their Mental Images

A total of 540 MMs about Instagram was analyzed, including those created by 188 adolescents who had no Instagram accounts. After thematic analysis of the adolescents’ MMs, the results indicated that the codes were gathered under four themes: “communication and interaction,” “knowledge acquisition,” “entertainment and sharing,” and “negative effects of Instagram.” Table 2 shows the themes and subthemes developed on the basis of the analysis.

Table 2.

Themes and Subthemes Developed From the Thematic Analysis.

Themes	Subthemes
Communication and interaction	Reasons for Instagram use Communicational features of Instagram
Knowledge acquisition
Entertainment and sharing
Negative effects of Instagram	AddictionNarcissistic traitsMood changesEthics violations

Some adolescents generated positive perceptions of Instagram, and all the themes (excluding the theme of “negative effects of Instagram”) were related to those perceptions. Figure 4 shows the samples of MMs that reflect their positive feelings about Instagram or its useful sides. Alternatively, there were a considerable number of MMs in which positive mental images were related to the negative ones.

Figure 4.

The Samples of MMs on Positive Perceptions Toward Instagram (A76, A365).

Specifically, the adolescents mostly used the emoticons (f = 1332) and user names by tagging (f = 631) on their MMs. On the other hand, a significant number of adolescents underlined the negative perceptions toward Instagram. Especially, the “negative effects of Instagram” theme is associated with adverse aspects of Instagram. Figure 5 shows the samples of MMs about the negative perceptions toward Instagram. We presented the findings of these main themes in detail later.

Figure 5.

The Samples of MMs on Negative Perceptions Toward Instagram (A60, A119).

Communication and Interaction

This theme is related to the Instagram use of adolescents as a communication and interaction tool. The findings highlighted that the theme of “communication and interaction” includes two subthemes: “reasons for Instagram use” and “communicational features of Instagram.” Table 3 shows the frequency distribution of codes for the “reasons for Instagram use” subtheme. For this theme, the adolescents dominantly focused on “messaging and chat” (f = 101), “maintaining the existing relationships” (f = 99), and “socialization” (f = 87) along with “making friends” (f = 172). Furthermore, some participants perceived Instagram as a social environment. The findings indicated that “flirting” is one of the reasons for Instagram use. The example mental images regarding this code were as follows: “boyfriend” (A40), “girls” (A161), “beautiful girls” (A452), “handsome boy” (A103), “philanderer” (A522), “love” (A59), and “my darling” (A86).

Table 3.

Codes of “Reasons for Instagram Use” Subtheme.

Code	f
Making friends	172
Messaging and chat	101
Maintaining the existing relationships	99
Socialization	87
Flirting	63
Connecting with friends	33
Easy access to others	19
Celebrating special days	12
Connecting with teachers	11
Connecting with family	9
Sense of belonging to a group	4
Gossip	3

With respect to the “communicational features of Instagram” subtheme, most of them had the images of “direct message” (f = 190) and “comment” (f = 136) as Instagram features. Table 4 shows the frequency distribution of codes for this subtheme. Specifically, the findings indicated that most of them used the “direct message” feature to message with others, the “comment” feature to interact with others, and the “follow” and “follow back” features of Instagram to see someone’s posts. Many adolescents generated several emoticons such as “grinning face with smiling eyes” (e.g., A40, A52, A178), “smiling face with heart eyes” (e.g., A333, A437, A456), and “flushed face” (e.g., A130, A195, A503) as a communication tool for comment or message. Some adolescents did not forget the Instagram usernames of their best friends. For instance, A65 underlined the “tagging” feature by writing her best friend’s Instagram username (“my dear friend: @username”) in her MM.

Table 4.

Codes of “Communicational Features of Instagram” Subtheme.

Code	f
Direct message	190
Comment	136
Follow	82
Follow back	81
Emoticon	77
Like	40
Tagging	22

Knowledge Acquisition

This theme is associated with the knowledge acquisition of adolescents on Instagram. The most frequently highlighted codes were “magazine and fashion” (f = 67), “diary news” (f = 42), “up-do-date information” (f = 37), and “sports” (f = 21) along with “others’ lives and personal information” (f = 114). Table 5 shows the frequency distribution of codes for this subtheme. For instance, “others’ lives and personal information” were attractive to adolescents, and this was related to their curiosity about others’ daily moments or posts and stalking. For this, some example mental images on the MMS were as follows: “memories” (A232), “who, with whom, where, what is (s)he doing?” (A40), “where are my friends?” (with location icon) (A95), “travel and foot posts” (A133), “who shares or what is shared?” (A155), “happy moments” (A169), “biographies” (A303), and “where is (s)he today?” (A474). Interestingly, most of the adolescents put less emphasis on knowledge acquisition within educational context. Contrary to this, the adolescents’ acts were dominantly related to the acquisition of knowledge about others by peeking.

Table 5.

Codes of “Knowledge Acquisition” Theme.

Code	f	Code	f
Others’ lives and personal information	114	Literature	7
Magazine and fashion	67	Science	6
Diary news	42	Technology	6
Up-to-date information	37	Culture and ethos	5
Sports	21	New challenges	5
School and course	14	Practical information	4
Interesting information	13	Art and design	3
Live and health	8	Psychology	1
Eat and food	7	Horoscope	1

Entertainment and Sharing

Under this theme, the participants generated several mental images according to their interests or enjoyments, some sharing features of Instagram. Table 6 shows the distribution of codes for this theme. It is also associated with the visual contents created by adolescents for sharing. The participants mainly generated the mental images of “story” (f = 171), “video” (f = 147), and “fun and fan pages” (f = 102). Moreover, 83 adolescents described Instagram as a leisure activity to have fun.

Table 6.

Codes of “Entertainment and Sharing” Theme.

Code	f	Code	f
Story	171	Live broadcast	43
Video	147	Caps	37
Photo	119	Memories	29
Fun and fan pages	102	Filters and effects	19
Leisure activity	83	Competition and draw	6
Music	52

As shown in Table 6, the virtual contents—especially story, video, and photo—are entertaining for adolescents. The most emphasized mental image of the adolescents was the “story” feature. Whereas A164 drew the relationship arrow between the “story” and “curiosity,” A40 explained the story with the icons of “clock” and “eye.” A387 generated mental images about features of “ask me,” “highlights,” and “rate of incidence.” The findings indicated that the others’ and their own stories were fun for adolescents.

Most of them expressed that they like funny or comic videos, including interestingly nonsense videos, too. Some outstanding examples of mental images were as follows: “Tik-Tok” (e.g., A61, A155, A232), “joke” (e.g., A322, A349), “slime” (e.g., A5, A155, A420), “PubG” (e.g., A21, A36, A103), “Korean video” (e.g., A5, A61, A300), “makeup” (e.g., A88, A196, A291), “cosmetics” (e.g., A112, A171), “movie scenes” (e.g., A271, A309), and “food” (e.g., A13, A306). A103 and A288 depicted comic videos as “sticking tongue out” face emoticon. It is clear that they mainly watch or share videos to spend time, but not to learn anything. As to Instagram story, it is available for 24 hours from the time of posting together with its “highlight” feature. More important, the stories allow users to create and develop their content by using text, images, emoticons, video clips, or polls. A408 drew the relationship arrow among “photos,” “filters,” and “effects.” A226 also expressed the Instagram as “face filters.” Most of the adolescents emphasized that their photo sharing was mostly in the form of “selfie” (e.g., A80, A344). According to the adolescents’ MMs, the posts were specifically associated with the adolescent’s own daily or interesting activities, body image, and visuality. Besides their positive perceptions, these situations can be related to the adolescents’ narcissistic tendencies and exhibitionism. For instance, A410 mentioned this situation as “the people who continuously share selfies” and drew the relationship arrow from this expression toward an unamused face emoji.

Some adolescents shared several words to send a message to someone in an allusive way or make innuendos. A442 wrote a sample statement on the paper: “I will not even insult you, because no insults can descend as much as you do.” This situation indirectly may be a sign of mood. Moreover, many adolescents followed the accounts of famous people. Accordingly, some adolescents indicated the names or usernames of singers (e.g., A30, A247), politicians (e.g., A57, A80), football players (e.g., A181, A339), sports teams (e.g., A88, A103), including influencer (e.g., A105, A225), and YouTuber (e.g., A361, A500). Importantly, they can have a tendency to imitate the celebrities’ behaviors.

The previously mentioned three themes are associated with the adolescents’ positive feelings about Instagram and its benefits (see Figures 2 and 4). For instance, two adolescents (A142, A160) dominantly drew the positive emoticon and the symbol of heart about Instagram (see Figure 6).

Figure 6.

The Sample of MMs of Positive Feelings About Instagram (A142, A160).

Negative Effects of Instagram

This theme is associated with negative effects of Instagram on adolescents, including its problematic use. The results showed that the negative effects of Instagram included the subthemes with their codes: “addiction,” “narcissistic acts,” “mood changes,” and “ethics violations.” Most of the adolescents also expressed the negative attitude with emoticons such as “crying face,” “frowning face,” and “worried face” (see Figure 5). A13 wrote for Instagram as something “plague” and “damaging” on her MM (see Figure 7).

Figure 7.

The Sample of MM on Negative Effects of Instagram (A13, A239).

Table 7 shows the distribution of codes for the “addiction” theme. This subtheme focused on the elements of social media or Instagram addiction. Specifically, a great number of adolescents mainly generated the code of “addiction” (f = 63). For instance, A119 likened Instagram to “addiction” by drawing a “cigarette” picture (see Figure 5). A33 also drew a lung for Instagram. While the codes such as “timewasting” (f = 32), “insomnia” (f = 24), “low success” (f = 20), and “school delay” (f = 7) were remarkable in the educational context, the codes such as “antisociality” (f = 36), “unreal relationships” (f = 11), “loneliness” (f = 9), “parental tension” (f = 12), “good friend” (f = 5), and “robotization” (f = 2) were critical in regards to social relations. Some respondents generated the health-related codes of “insomnia” (f = 24), “extreme curiosity” (f = 15), “physical impairment” (f = 15), “feeling good temporarily” (f = 11), “eating disorder” (f = 10), and “distractibility” (f = 2). Twelve adolescents reported ideas on the “fear of missing out.” This code is associated with “extreme curiosity.”

Table 7.

Codes of “Addiction” Subtheme.

Code	f	Code	f	Code	f
Addiction	63	Physical impairment	15	School delay	7
Antisociality	36	Parental tension	12	A good friend	5
Timewasting	32	Fear of missing out	12	Instant message control	4
Insomnia	24	Feeling good temporarily	11	Distractibility	2
Low success	20	Unreal relationships	11	Robotization	2
Excess quota of internet	20	Eating disorder	10
Extreme curiosity	15	Loneliness	9

Indeed, these codes are not only closely related to addiction but also related to each other. Each of them can be a critical determinant of the Instagram or social media addiction from a general perspective. For example, A200 drew a relational arrow from “addiction” to “overuse,” “sleep problem,” “lateness to school,” and “low exam marks.” In regard to antisociality, the adolescents highlighted the codes of “away from real life” (A36), “imprisonment on Instagram” (A106), and “weak bilateral relation” (A190). Some adolescents drew a relational arrow from “timewasting” to “boredom” as a reason (e.g., A105, A133, A400). In regard to timewasting, A239 painted a clock figure with speed effect and laid emphasis on “insomnia” by defining it as “sleepless nights” (see Figure 7). Similarly, A11 painted a “sandglass” to illustrate a time-consuming application. All these findings supported the previous findings about the time spent on SNSs per day. Although A90 mentioned Instagram as “enjoyment in bed,” she drew a sleepless emoji and defined it as “being late for school” and “getting low course marks.” The adolescents likened Instagram to negative concepts such as “empty brain” (A64), “deadness” (A199), and “nonsense” (A502).

Table 8 shows the distribution of codes for the “narcissistic acts” subtheme. This theme is associated especially with psychological issues such as self-promotion, being admired by others, competing with others, and being the center of attention. The respondents mainly generated the codes of “follower counts” (f = 108), “like counts” (f = 69), and “willingness to popularity” (f = 60).

Table 8.

Codes of “Narcissistic Acts” Theme.

Code	f	Code	f	Code	f
Follower counts	108	Incidence rate	9	Exhibitionism	4
Like counts	69	Show-off	7	Impersonation	3
Willingness of popularity	60	Anxiety of dislike	6	Egoistic attitude	2
Excessive selfie sharing	19	Competition of counts	5	Expectation of interest	2
Striking profile and biography	16	Drawing attention	5	Proving oneself	1
Extreme self-admiration	10	Self-seeking follows	4	Humiliating peers	1

Interestingly, we found that most of the adolescents generated codes related to narcissistic acts theme and wrote their own Instagram usernames by tagging on the paper of MM. Some adolescents tend to quantitatively increase their follower and like counts. For instance, A3 drew a relational arrow from “follower counts” to “purchasing the followers,” “follower cheats,” and “to be popular.” To be popular among others is the basic motive for adolescents’ effort to increase follower or like counts on Instagram. At this point, there is a situation of self-prominence. Importantly, these excessive reactions can trigger narcissistic personality disorder in psychological context.

Table 9 shows the distribution of codes for “mood changes” subtheme. This theme is associated with one’s personally negative emotional situations. The adolescents mainly generated the codes of “unhappiness” (f = 29), “anxiety” (f = 20), and “depression” (f = 11). The issues such as social events, bad moods, relationship status, and attitude toward others shaped their emotional changes.

Table 9.

Codes of “Mood Changes” Theme.

Code	f	Code	f
Unhappiness	29	Hopelessness	4
Anxiety	20	Stress	2
Depression	11	Pessimism	2
Nervousness	7	Introversion	1
Envy	6	Fad	1
Hate	4

As previously mentioned, in the “entertainment and sharing” theme, most of the adolescents expressed their feelings by sharing the elements such as video, music, and words. On the other hand, a user can also have negative emotions after seeing the posts of a person who seems to be happy on Instagram. (S)he can behave stiltedly with a low self-image. For instance, interestingly, A68 drew a picture about negative mood effects on her MM (see Figure 8). She described Instagram as “death and suicide,” along with the concepts of “envy” and “unhappiness.” This situation is closely associated with “addiction” subtheme and can have serious consequences for adolescents’ lives. Furthermore, especially female adolescents are jealous of other females’ physical appearance. A30 and A42 drew a relationship arrow between “well-shaped body” and “envy.”

Figure 8.

A Sample of MM on Negative Mood Effects of Instagram (A68).

Table 10 shows the distribution of codes for the “ethics violations” subtheme. It points out that there is a big concern in terms of security and privacy of Instagram. This is actually a critical issue related to information ethics. Most of the adolescents focused on “fake account” (f = 71), “disclosure” (f = 68), “stalking” (f = 66), and “invasion of privacy” (f = 35) on their MMs. A482 expressed her safety concern for Instagram as “two-step verification.” A101 highlighted the following expressions for “fake account”: “stalk” and “secret follow.” A few adolescents stated that they received abusive messages from unknown users. The example statements of adolescents: “abuse” and “hi, how are you? Shall we be friends?” (A300), “redundant message requests” (A41), and “sauced offers” (A425).

Table 10.

Codes of “Ethics Violations” Subtheme.

Code	f
Fake account	71
Disclosure	68
Stalking	66
Verbal abuse	43
Lying	37
Invasion of privacy	35
Stealing the account	23
Cyberbullying	11
Concern of safety	9
Fraud	4
Threat	1

The findings showed that some adolescents displayed unrealistic behaviors. In relation to lying, A6 underlined the following statements: “fake life,” “stilted behaviors,” and “look beautiful and good all the time.” Similarly, A65 expressed the “lies about gender,” meaning that some males introduce themselves as a girl to talk with other girls, along with “insincere and unrealistic relations.”

Discussion and Conclusions

In this study, first, the results showed that although overwhelming number of adolescents had a Facebook account, Instagram was a much more popular SNS among adolescents, even when compared with others. This is a remarkable finding for social media use of adolescents who are in a critical transitional period in terms of physical and psychological changes. Although many studies have been conducted on Facebook as a SNS, the recent studies have revealed that Instagram had a strong effect on youngsters, especially adolescents. Typically, many statistics have shown that Facebook has the most monthly active users (Statista, 2019), and Instagram has recently experienced a boom in comparison to the other SNSs such as Facebook and Twitter. One of the pivotal reasons is that image-based social media platforms (vs. text-based) enhance intimacy among the youngsters (Pittman & Reich, 2016).

Second, this study focused profoundly on the analysis of adolescents’ MMs about Instagram. The mental images of the participants are shaped by both themselves and the reactions of others on Instagram. Moreover, the findings provide certain evidence for the motives for its use, its striking features, and its effects on adolescents. According to the thematic analysis, the findings indicated that the codes were gathered under four main themes: (a) communication and interaction, (b) knowledge acquisition, (c) entertainment and sharing, and (d) negative effects of Instagram. Indeed, these themes are theoretically compatible with U&G theory for Instagram (Lee et al., 2015; Sheldon & Bryant, 2016). This theory helps to understand on a solid ground why people use traditional or new media that can satisfy their needs. Lin and Lu (2011) indicated that the factors of network externalities, usefulness, and enjoyment play dominant roles in people’s SNS use. Supporting this idea, Ting et al. (2015) indicated that the behavioral beliefs of Instagram use were composed of the factors such as personal gratification, features usefulness, socializing role, and entertainment.

With visualizing elements, the features (e.g., filters, effects, color palette, cropping, and sizing) and components (e.g., story, boomerang, and live broadcast) of Instagram are attractive to adolescents. The integration of different contents (e.g., emoticons, hashtags, tagging, survey, test, question, stickers) into visuals and posting multiple pictures or videos are also striking features for adolescents. Moreover, the virtual-based platforms such as Instagram are perceived more specialized and newer than other media by youngsters (Alhabash & Ma, 2017). Therefore, adolescents prefer Instagram due to its novelty and interaction. Bay (2015) indicated that young people, especially adolescents, explain themselves better to peers, thanks to Instagram, and they also try to prove themselves on this social environment. According to O'Donnell (2018), it affects the desire to express personal visual identity. This means that adolescents’ movements on their Instagram profiles give information about their personality.

As for “communication and interaction” theme, Instagram offers an opportunity for adolescents to socialize with each other. Therefore, their social and emotional processes are also enacted on Instagram. Its features such as sending direct message between followers, leaving comments or likes on the posts, sending messages, and joining a chat in the stories are practical to interact or communicate with others. The adolescents use Instagram more often as it is an important media for communication and social interaction with friends, family members, and even strangers. They can continue existing social relationships and make new friends via Instagram. Kim et al. (2017) underlined that social interaction is one of the most important motivators for Instagram users. Moreover, the adolescents, as digital natives, prefer graphics to texts in their communications (Teo et al., 2016). Unlike the positive perspectives on the social interaction function of Instagram, there is a major concern about whether it is entirely a socialization tool. This means that the more the adolescents interact with their peers on Instagram, the less they prefer face-to-face environments to communicate. This causes to a virtual social life away from real relationships.

With respect to “knowledge acquisition,” the adolescents are more curious about others’ lives along with daily, useful, and educational knowledge. This interesting finding is associated with peeping or voyeurism, which is distinct from pure curiosity or seeking for information about others, and all these concepts point to a psychological tendency to access private details of others (Metzl, 2004). Moreover, others’ happy lives can have a negative impact on adolescents’ mood changes such as unhappiness, stress, and envy.

“Entertainment and sharing” theme indicates that Instagram is a visual sharing tool and fun for them, including its photo capturing and manipulation features. In addition, some adolescents tend to lead a good or perfect life in accordance with the Instagram posts as a positive self-presentation (Kang & Wei, 2020). Alhabash and Ma (2017) indicated that college students mostly utilized Instagram for entertainment purposes compared with Facebook and Twitter. Stories, photos, and videos on Instagram are a major means of online interaction. The notable finding of this study is that they were mostly delighted with the “story” function of Instagram. This theme includes contents created by themselves. Indeed, one of the reasons behind Instagram usage is the motive for creativity. This motive is related to showing off one’s own skills and creating art (Sheldon & Bryant, 2016). In this study, most of adolescents also laid emphasis on the joking or nonsense videos and filtered photos—especially selfies—for their Instagram use. If an adolescent shares his/her own photos or videos with faces, these contents become more noticeable for their peers. Bakhshi et al. (2014) found that photos with faces were more likely to receive likes and comments. “Likes” or “comments” on Instagram can positively affect one’s self-esteem and self-worth. However, an excessive number of shares or likes can be an underlying factor for risky behaviors of adolescents in relation to its negative sides.

Regarding the “negative effects of Instagram” theme, the findings showed that most of the adolescents underlined the negative effects or harms of Instagram. Specifically, the key points were addiction, narcissism, mood changes, and ethics violations. These findings are consistent with the results of the studies in the related literature (Akram & Kumar, 2017; Mantymaki & Islam, 2016). As one of the key points, Instagram addiction is a primary concern for the wellness of adolescents’ lives. According to the findings of the present study, the factors such as antisociality, timewasting, low success, insomnia, and loneliness can be critical indicators of such an addiction. As adolescents spend more time on Instagram, they sleep late and have sleep problems. Similarly, Alhabash and Ma (2017) found that the college students spent the greatest amount of time on Instagram. Its excessive use is related to the intensity of use and the existence of favorable affective and cognitive attitudes toward it.

These addictive factors can cause them to fail in the school. Second point, narcissism, exaggerated self-concept, is identified as a significant predictor of Instagram use (Moon et al., 2016). Even if the literature is controversial, they enjoy showing off to others and have a tendency toward exhibitionism and superiority (Ackerman et al., 2011). Another notable finding is that the adolescents underlined dominantly the willingness for popularity, follower and likes counts, and selfie sharing feature. Several studies have indicated that narcissists might be more inclined to share selfies and attractive photos, be keen on receiving likes and comments, use hashtags more frequently (Sheldon & Bryant, 2016; Weiser, 2015), feel themselves in need of more popularity (Jin & Muqaddam, 2018), and spend more time on Instagram (Moon et al., 2016). In addition, Andreassen et al. (2017) found that narcissism is related to a higher level of social media addiction.

Especially the number of likes and followers on their posts are important for adolescents. Many of these factors are typically an indication of their seeking for popularity (Sheldon & Bryant, 2016). Sherman et al. (2018) found that the liked photos stimulated the users’, especially the adolescents’, nucleus accumbens—brain’s reward center—by affecting their neural and behavioral responses. An adolescent’s brain has not experienced maturation and sensitive with its reward areas. Therefore, most of them have a tendency to be admired and approved by peers. Receiving too many likes and having more followers are also closely linked with social media addiction.

Furthermore, in the present study, most of the adolescents follow the celebrities’ profiles. For this behavior, Djafarova and Rushworth (2017) highlighted that the youngsters can take celebrities as a model by relying on their positive or risky behaviors. Third key point, mood changes is negatively related to emotional changes. The reasoning behind these changes is others’ happy lives, not seeing value by peers, unreal relationships, and loneliness. Last, the adolescents expressed dominantly ethics violations on Instagram. Instagram can be a ground for adolescents’ practicing unethical behaviors such as online hate speech, humiliation, exhibitionism, fake account, and fraud. Indeed, one of the most important reasons for these situations is the problematic use of Instagram by adolescents. Because of this undesirable usage, they can display risky behaviors. Another reason is also that they can express their thoughts and feelings easily on this platform. Notably, there are privacy concerns such as the visibility of the profile and the disclosure of individual knowledge in the social media context (Chen & Chen, 2015). The adolescents’ beliefs might reveal the understanding that Instagram’ features for interaction and entertainment hold greater value than ethical issues and its negative effects.

To sum up, it is clear that Instagram has negative effects on adolescents. However, its characteristics and opportunities are also attractive to them. Therefore, these striking features and effects are important not only in the educational context but also in psychologically shaping adolescents’ personal and social traits, particularly in the adolescence period.

Implication, Suggestion, and Limitations

With the prevalence of internet, the SNSs such as Instagram provide opportunities for an “anytime, anywhere” experience that supports learning. Based on the findings, this study has several implications for the educational use of Instagram by reducing its negative effects. Hence, based on the aforementioned four themes, we suggested not only a theoretical model but also an applied perspective for the educational use of Instagram (see Figure 10). Several studies on its educational use have shown that Instagram is an effective tool for learning. For instance, Al-Ali (2014) found that Instagram had a significant influence in enhancing the university students’ language skills in the English as a Second Language classes.

The present study revealed that Instagram can have negative effects on adolescents such as narcissistic, addictive, and unethical behaviors along with the underlying factors for its use. Therefore, the ethical issues should antecedently be addressed in adolescence, a developmentally critical period. First, the experts should provide an awareness training or seminar to reduce these critical effects since the adolescents’ problematic Instagram use can be a substantial factor for the development of addiction. The cooperation with shareholders such as parents and teachers is important for achieving this purpose. Without achieving the psychological dimension, it can be difficult to succeed in the educational use of Instagram. To raise awareness, an expert (e.g., educational technologist, psychiatrist) should inform the adolescents and others (e.g., teachers, parents) about its negative effects and correct and educational usage. Following this, a technical training for Instagram or other SNSs use can be organized in the school. The usage of Instagram or other SNSs may be integrated into the curricula of several disciplines. As the leader of teaching process, teachers or prospective teachers should be informed of social media-based learning via in service and preservice training.

Unlike other SNSs, especially Twitter, Instagram has proven that “pictures speak louder than words” (Lee et al., 2015). Pittman and Reich (2016) mentioned that Instagram visuals are effective or meaningful ways of communication among people. Accordingly, these significant visual-based features of Instagram can be turned into an opportunity for learning by educators. Specifically, a teacher can create an educational profile and guide the adolescents for its educational use. It is a true that Instagram is more suitable for out-of-class learning activities. In this cyber environment, the learning contents are precious cornerstones, and therefore, their instructional designs should be well planned. Based upon the findings of this study, we suggest that the learning contents may also include the following features along with multimedia learning principles (Mayer, 2009): entertaining, funny or stunning visuals, storification, the gifs, emoticons, filters, hashtags, polls, surveys, and tagging. Moreover, the educators can prefer the stories or posts (e.g., video, images) due to their useful functions in the content development process.

Instagram allows sharing the preprepared contents via other apps or software, including certain adjustments on them. For its educational use, adding multiple contents is one of the remarkable features. Thanks to this feature, the teachers can add successively educational visuals more than one. This is suitable for gamification, storification, and edutainment in the educational context. For stories on Instagram, the features such as poll, survey, and ask me a question can be used as a measurement and evaluation tool (see Figure 9). Once the teacher has shared an educational content, the students can participate in discussion activities; comment on educational posts; and communicate with their peers, teacher, and the content itself in an interactive way. This process theoretically supports collaborative and peer learning.

Figure 9.

The Samples of Instagram Features for Educational Content Development.

In the light of the findings, based upon four main themes, we also suggested a model for using Instagram as a teaching tool. Figure 10 shows this suggested theoretical educational model for adolescents. Although Instagram is the most common visual sharing platform, it has surprisingly drawn little attention within the educational context (Gonulal, 2019). Considering the adolescents have positive attitudes toward social media platforms, especially for Instagram, we suggested that this educational model may be used for out-of-class activities by teachers, thanks to its beneficial and useful characteristics. With its potential, Instagram can be an effective outdoor teaching tool to draw attention and create collaborative or entertaining learning environments. It is worth noting that the educators should use it to support the learning activities outside the school.

Figure 10.

Suggested Theoretical Model for Using Instagram as a Teaching Model.

Undoubtedly, a noteworthy strength of this study is the in-depth examination of adolescents’ mental images via the MMs as a powerful tool along with the sample size. However, as in any study, this study has several limitations besides its strengths. First, the sample was adolescents in the high schools of Turkey. Thus, the generalization of the study results is restricted. Further studies could investigate Instagram’s effects on university or middle school students in large sample sizes by using quantitative approaches. Second, although the study discovers the depths of the adolescents’ brains about Instagram, it reveals a comprehensive theoretical structure of its use, features, and influences rather than the causality or relationality. Based upon the findings of this study, the codes and themes would be greatly beneficial to reveal the critical variables of Instagram and help to create the items of new valid and reliable instruments. Hence, the findings also pave new ways for future research on the framework of U&G theory and motivation theories, which explain the individual behaviors on Instagram as a fast-growing SNS, along with the instruments on social media.

Considering its use by the adolescents, the specific goals and contents on Instagram should be integrated into the curriculum, especially of the “information and communication technologies” course in the elementary, secondary, or high schools. The findings of this study may be challenging not only for education scholars but also for psychologists. It makes several contributions to the literature by leading the body of research on Instagram to a new direction and providing a greater understanding of the potential role of its educational use in the formal and informal learning process, including the dimensions of U&G or motivation theories, and technology acceptance model.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iDs

Mustafa Fidan

Murat Debbağ

Author Biographies

Mustafa Fidan is an assistant professor in department of educational sciences at Bartin University, Turkey. He also works at Distance Education Application and Research Center. He received a Ph. D. in curriculum and instruction from Bolu Abant Izzet Baysal University in Turkey. His research interests include distance education, augmented reality, hidden curriculum, curriculum evaluation, teacher education, instructional design and educational technologies.

Murat Debbağ is an assistant professor in department of educational sciences at Bartin University, Turkey. He also works at Distance Education Application and Research Center. Completed his Ph.D (Curriculum and Instruction) at Abant Izzet Baysal University, Bolu, and his master (Educational Technology) at Gazi University, Ankara. His areas of interest are distance education, educational technologies, teacher training and blended learning.

Başak Fidan is a visual arts teacher at Ministry of Education, Turkey. Completed her master (Fine arts) at Abant Izzet Baysal University, Bolu. Her areas of interest are mind maps, visual arts, art education, creativity.

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