July 16, 2024
Even on Instagram, teens mostly feel bored
Concern that social media is driving has risen to such a pitch that the majority of states in the country have (which owns Instagram and Facebook) and the U.S. surgeon general , similar to those on tobacco.
New research from the 天美影视传媒 finds, though, that while some teens do experience negative feelings when using Instagram, the dominant feeling they have around the platform is boredom. They open the app because they鈥檙e bored. Then they sift through largely irrelevant content, mostly feeling bored, while seeking interesting bits to share with their friends in direct messages 鈥� the most constant source of connection they found on the platform. Then, eventually bored with what researchers call a 鈥渃ontent soup,鈥� they log off.
The study tracked the experiences of 25 U.S. teens moment by moment as they used the app. Teens leaned on a few techniques to stabilize their experiences 鈥斅爏uch as using likes, follows and unfollows to curate their feeds, and racing past aggravating content. The researchers used these results to make a few design recommendations, including prompts to cue reflection while using the app or features that clarify and simplify how users can curate their feeds.
The team on June 18 at the ACM Interaction Design and Children Conference in Delft, Netherlands.
鈥淎 lot of the talk about social media is at the extremes,鈥� said lead author , a UW doctoral student in the Information School. 鈥淵ou either hear about harassment or bullying 鈥� which are real phenomena 鈥� or this kind of techno-utopian view of things, where companies like Meta, among others, seem to say they are thinking about wellbeing constantly but we’ve yet to see concrete results of that. So we really wanted to study the mundane, daily experience of teens using Instagram.鈥�
To capture this in-the-moment experience, the team first trained the participants in mindfulness techniques and had them download an app called AppMinder. The simple interface, which the researchers developed, would pop up five minutes after the teens started using Instagram and have them fill out a quick survey about how they were feeling emotionally and why. The pop-ups came once every three hours. Teens were supposed to use Instagram and fill out at least one response a day for seven days, though many submitted multiple responses each day.
Finally, researchers interviewed teens about their responses and had them open Instagram again and narrate how they were feeling in real time and explain how they were experiencing certain features.
鈥淲e saw teens turning to Instagram in moments of boredom, looking for some kind of stimulation,鈥� said co-senior author , a UW associate professor in the iSchool. 鈥淭hey were finding enough moments of closeness and connection with their friends on the app to keep them coming back. That value is definitely there, but it鈥檚 really buried in gimmicks, attention-grabbing features, content that鈥檚 sometimes upsetting or frustrating, and a ton of junk.鈥�
Much of what Instagram鈥檚 algorithm served up was not what the teens were looking for. Yet they鈥檇 keep wading through hundreds of posts to find a single meme or piece of fashion inspiration to share with their friends. Overall, they found the most value in the app鈥檚 direct message function, not in this scrolling.
Because they found value in specific experiences, teens employed several mitigation strategies to focus their time on the app:
- Trying to curate their feeds to emphasize posts that made them feel good rather than bad or bored, by following, unfollowing, hiding and liking
- Scrolling quickly, skipping or logging off when content made them feel bad
- Toggling Instagram features 鈥� hiding like-counts, turning off certain notifications 鈥斅爐o reduce negative emotions
鈥淚nstagram鈥檚 push notifications and algorithmically curated feeds forever hold out the promise of teens experiencing a meaningful interaction, while delivering on this promise only intermittently,鈥� said co-senior author , a UW associate professor in the iSchool. 鈥淯nfortunately, it鈥檚 much easier to identify the problem than to fix it. The current business model of most social media platforms depends on keeping users scrolling as often and for as long as possible. Legislation is needed to compel platforms to change the status quo.鈥�
Based on their findings, the researchers offered three design changes to improve teens鈥� experiences:
- Notifications, like those from AppMinder, that prompt teens to consider what they鈥檙e on Instagram to do and to reflect in the moment
- Features that make curating feeds easier, such as a 鈥淭his is good for me鈥� button that clearly highlights positive content
- The use of data to track signs of well-being and its opposite 鈥� for example, tracking when users skip past content or log off and pairing this with other data
This summer, the team will take the data from the study and examine it with a separate group of teens, aiming for further insights and recommendations.
鈥淚t is not and should not be the sole responsibility of teens to make their experiences better, to navigate these algorithms without knowing how they work, exactly,鈥� Landesman said. 鈥淭he responsibility also lies with companies running social media platforms.鈥�
Additional co-authors include , a UW doctoral student in the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering; , a UW doctoral student in the iSchool; , a UW doctoral student in psychology; and , a UW assistant professor of psychology. This research was partially funded by the Oread Fund and the CERES network.
For more information, contact Landesman at roteml@uw.edu, Hiniker at alexisr@uw.edu and Davis at kdavis78@uw.edu.
