Instagram can be a positive force for women with mental illness, according to Concordia researcher
Fanny Gravel-Patry says that some users find relief, comfort and validation on the much-maligned app
Peer-Reviewed PublicationIMAGE: FANNY GRAVEL-PATRY: “I WAS INTERESTED IN WHY WOMEN ARE TURNING TO THE PLATFORM, WHAT KIND OF CONTENT THEY CONSUME AND CREATE AND WHAT THEY FIND THERE THEY CAN’T FIND ELSEWHERE.” view more
CREDIT: CONCORDIA UNIVERSITY
The image-based social media app Instagram has come under repeated and sustained attacks over the negative mental-health effects it has on its users, in particular young women and girls, over the past few years. The extent of Instagram’s potential for harm is still being widely debated, but a Concordia researcher argues in a new paper that regular use of the app is not necessarily a bad thing. And it can in some instances be beneficial to women with mental-health issues, including eating disorders and anxiety.
In a paper published in the journal Feminist Media Studies, Concordia PhD candidate and 2021 Public Scholar Fanny Gravel-Patry conducts an in-depth study of women’s use of Instagram in their daily lives. The study follows the social media habits of three Quebec women living with mental illness who have incorporated Instagram use into their daily habits and found that it has positive effects on their mental health. She notes that they use the app in a variety of ways depending on their personalities, whether creating and finding mental-health resources, sharing their healing journeys or capturing screen shots of inspirational posts. Gravel-Patry says Instagram has a soothing effect on these women that helps them cope with limited access to mental-health resources.
“I was interested in why they are turning to the platform, what kind of content they consume and create and what they find there they can’t find elsewhere,” Gravel-Patry notes.
Healing digital habits
She says there are good reasons to focus on women's digital habits. First, adopting regular habits is often the first step people living with mental illness can do to improve their mental health, whether it is taking up exercise, going to therapy, crafting, writing in a journal or spending constructive time online. Second, she was interested in seeing how the women she interviewed were able to break away from the pattern of repetitive images portraying women as hysterical or prone to insanity to create new, more positive discourses. And third, she wanted to see if social media habits can produce a healing transformation in the long run.
“I was trying to put all of this together to see how social media fits here as something that assists in recovery and not as something that hinders it,” she says. “I also wanted to consider it not as the best tool necessarily, but because it is a tool that is available to them.”
All three women Gravel-Patry focuses on for her study are Quebec graduate students. One suffers from an eating disorder, another is dealing with generalized anxiety and an eating disorder and the third lives with anxiety, body image issues and traumas related to her childhood experiences of racism.
All of them use Instagram regularly as a way of coping with their mental illness but in different ways. One decided to share her recovery process through her account, while the other two preferred a more anonymous approach, such as taking screenshots of positive memes or following accounts with content that allays feelings of anxiety.
Mental health meets platform capitalism
She notes that Instagram is not inherently beneficial. As a company operating in the platform-capitalism paradigm, it bears its share of responsibility for contributing to an economic system that profits off women and girls who can be negatively impacted by it. This takes on added relevance at a time when mental health–care funding is targeted to self-care initiatives such as developing digital mental-health tools.
“Because there are limited resources, people do not have the choice but to take care of their own mental health and go on apps like Instagram,” she says. “But these are apps that ultimately encourage the structure of individualized commodification.”
Read the cited paper: “A series of little high fives”: mental health and digital habituation in women’s Instagram practices.”
JOURNAL
Feminist Media Studies
METHOD OF RESEARCH
Observational study
SUBJECT OF RESEARCH
People
ARTICLE TITLE
“A series of little high fives”: mental health and digital habituation in women’s Instagram practices
New research shows female selfie posting can be driven by aggression
New research from Swansea University shows that female selfie posting is associated with intimidatory self-presentation strategies, linked to higher levels of aggression.
Peer-Reviewed PublicationNew research from Swansea University shows that female selfie posting is associated with intimidatory self-presentation strategies, linked to higher levels of aggression.
The study, conducted by Professor Phil Reed from the University’s Faculty of Science and Engineering and academics from the University of Strathclyde, has been published in the Journal of Social Media in Society.
The team examined the posting of selfies and non-selfies on social media by 150 individuals, separately assessing the degree to which they adopted different types of self-presentation strategies; how people act with others to make an impression.
On average, females posted five selfies and ten non-selfies a month, compared to two selfies and six non-selfies by males. However, there was a large range of selfie posts, with some people posting more than 40 selfies a month.
For females, the strongest predictor of selfie posting was the degree to which they adopted intimidatory self-presentational strategies. The more they tended to emit actions in the real world with an intent to project a powerful and dangerous personality to induce fear in others, the more they posted selfies. These selfies were not directed specifically at either males or females, but at the online community in general.
Males did not show any relationship between real-world intimidatory self-presentation and selfie posting, but their desire to avoid punishment, that is, to fit in and be accepted, predicted the sharing of selfies.
This finding contrasts with previous studies conducted in real-world situations, where females do not display associations between this aggressive characteristic and their behaviours as strongly as males.
Professor Phil Reed from Swansea University’s School of Psychology said: “When the usual social constraints that operate in the ‘real world’ are removed, it could facilitate the expression of this aggressive facet of female personality.”
Professor Reed added: “These results suggest that traditional androcentric views of aggression need to be altered.
“Thinking of aggression by females as a result of some slightly male-like physiology in those females or as a mating strategy directed against other females will not do.
“Rather, digital behaviour suggests women are not programmed to be passive but are just as actively aggressive as men, and, in some circumstances, more so – and not just when getting a mate.”
This research follows earlier work by the team published in the journal, Personality and Individual Differences, which also found that intimidatory self-presentation was most strongly associated with selfie posting by females.
The data further revealed that, while males were generally more assertive than females in the real world, there was no difference in the use of real-world aggressive self-presentation strategies between genders; in fact, males tended to show higher levels of ingratiation strategies than females.
Professor Reed said: “While males reported being more assertive in the real world, these behaviours were not always associated with their online behaviour, where females tended to let their aggressive traits guide their behaviour more than males. This may reflect the operation of a different set of social-role norms or their absence in online settings."
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METHOD OF RESEARCH
Experimental study
SUBJECT OF RESEARCH
People
ARTICLE TITLE
Intimidatory assertive self-presentation in selfie posting is greater in females than males
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