Instagram Male Celebrities influence on Teen self esteem

Knowing and understanding this, the celebrities often post images that are meant to inform or encourage their followers about certain issues in the society. In this paper, a review of the media influence of images of male celebrities to male teenagers’ self-esteem is done. How the Images of Male Celebrities that Male Teenagers View on Instagram may Create a Media Influence that Affects those Teen’s Self-esteem Introduction The use of social networking sites on the internet among teenagers has increased with surge in use of smartphones. Smartphones provide a faster and effective way in which people communicate or share information. Majority of teenagers across the United States have access to smart phones which are usually installed with common social media sites like Facebook, twitter and Instagram.

A study of how self-esteem is influenced among male teenagers is needed. Media influence is the perceived effects of interacting with news or information from web sources on a person (Martin & Bush, 2000). Self-esteem, on the other hand, is the personal feeling of worthiness or worthless after interacting with certain aspects of life like poverty, news, social status and performance in an area (Sakellaropoulo, 2003). Literature Review Use of Instagram Instagram is generally referred to as a novel photo-sharing social media platform (Huang & Su, 2018). Essentially, Instagram is a smartphone-based application that allows users to take pictures, photos or videos, apply different image manipulating tools to transform an appearance, and sharing them to friends instantly (Wiederhold, 2018). Male teenagers, like their opposite gender, love viewing the glamorous lifestyles of their favorite celebrities any time they hear a notification on their smartphones (Duffy, 2018).

Instagram usage among the younger generation has surpassed the use of other social media sites like Twitter (Duffy, 2018). Celebrities have become aware of this and are often seen more on Instagram than on sites, in order to connect with their daily audiences. It’s become a norm to se celebrities posting glamorous pictures or videos of themselves in stylish outfits to appease their followers (Duffy, 2018). This, in essence, generates trends for the day, which are shared and hyped by entertainment blogs and news. In another study, Ferrara, Interdonato, & Tagarelli (2014) opted to find out why Instagram was becoming a popular networking site. In the findings, most of the respondents pointed to the fact that one could manipulate images to make them look appealing to their followers.

With this characterization, most of Instagram users’ pastures and videos do not represent the true picture. However, most teenagers are aware of this but still admire and wish to live the same lives. Male celebrities often post pictures and videos that male teenagers like to associate with. Low self-esteem among social media users can be attributed to the influencing nature of the images they see. Media Influence According to Martin & Bush (2000), media plays an important role in our life by informing and making people aware of what’s going on around them. The role played by media in the society is diverse in terms of the areas covered. Entertainment, for instance, may contain a range of information that informs people about common and new topics in the industry.

Different forms of media exist to provide people with knowledge and information whose sole purpose is to influence or educate people about issues surrounding them (Martin & Bush, 2000). Furthermore, the influence of the media can be viewed in the lenses of how it makes people feel about certain topics, concepts and stories (Martin & Bush, 2000). People are able to generate specific feelings and reactions when they read, see or hear about certain types of news. According to a study done by Nesi, & Prinstein (2015), social media sites like Twitter and Instagram are more efficient in delivering information to their users. They are mostly used by teenagers and younger adults to access information about the trending stories of the day. Celebrities, aware of the impact these sites have, take advantage by posting information that is guaranteed to affect a person’s emotional status and thinking.

This, as a result, results in a ‘war of posts’ among peers who want to look the best in the eyes of their followers. In most cases, teenagers in the same school or class share followers and even people they follow on social media platforms. A media influence exists in the manner in which the social media platform users react to how their posts have been perceived by others. Some of the posts receive few likes while others record more. This in turn results in a further urge to post images that will reach a wider audience. The relevance, timing, alignment and confidence of information perceived to be more important by users of the media. The study further aimed to identify what constituted media influence among users.

Majority of the respondents stated the ability to change a person’s mind as one of the indicators of influencing media. People are able to rely on this importance to apply the information received in their personal lives. However, this applies to both positive and negative information. Bhatia, & Sudhir (2018) conducted a study to identify factors affecting self-esteem among adolescents in Berlin, Germany. In the findings, they found out that body image was an important aspect of self-esteem. The respondents strongly noted that the nature of their bodies determined how they rated themselves. Those who didn’t like how they looked had low self esteem while those who were happy with their looks demonstrated high levels of self-esteem. Furthermore, the findings of the study indicated that social experiences of the teenagers greatly affected their self-esteem.

In another study, Jan, Soomro, & Ahmad (2017) sought to identify the role played by social media in influencing self-esteem among students. A total of 150 students took part in the research. The findings of the research showed that students who spend less than an hour on social media sites had high levels of self-esteem. The study found out that the more students spent their time on social networking sites, the more they lowered their self-esteem. The findings of the study further indicated that the type of information viewed on social networking sites like Facebook determined a student’s self-esteem (Jan, Soomro, & Ahmad, 2017). Upward comparisons can be inspirational to people as they encourage people to mimic what they see or read. At the same time, depending on other life factors, it can result in lower self-esteem when people can’t replicate what they see on the sites.

People are able to feel inferior once they evaluate their lives in this case. The use of Instagram among male teenagers can be related to a study conducted by Ali, Iqbal, & Iqbal (2016) in which the impacts of posts among celebrities to their fans were investigated. The findings of this study showed that people who followed specific celebrities developed certain styles that resembled what they posted on social media sites. The use Instagram has been found to have a tremendous media influence on users. It’s been discovered that it changes a person’s mind in terms of what to think about. Most of the users forget to think about what surrounds them and focus on keeping up with the lives of their favorite celebrities.

Additionally, a connection between Instagram use and media influence can be seen through the effects of social networking sites on people’s lives. Teenagers place more importance on the posts they make to sites like Facebook and Instagram upon which they are able to evaluate other people’s reactions. Further research is needed to identify the media influence of images of male celebrities on Instagram to teenage males. Additionally, more research is needed to determine how self-esteem of male teenagers is affected when they view images of male celebrities on Instagram. Available literature only gives a general overview of social media influence on a person’s self-esteem. Qualitative Research Proposal The gaps identified through the literature review require more research. After reviewing the literature on this topic, I propose that the following research question should be explored: RQ1: What forms of media influence exist when male teenagers view images of male celebrities on Instagram? RQ2: How is self-esteem of male teenagers affected when they view images of male celebrities on Instagram? RQ3: How is self-esteem of male teenagers influenced by the media when they view Instagram posts of male celebrities? In order to answer these research questions, an ethnographic research is needed.

It is operationally defined as the effects of accessing Instagram posts of male celebrities among male teenagers. Teenage male Instagram users is any group of people who are men in the age bracket of 13 – 19 years. Male celebrities are the men who are on Instagram and are viewed as celebrities by the teenage male Instagram users. The dependent variable, self-esteem, is operationally defined as the feeling of either being worthy or worthless among male teenage Instagram users after seeing images of celebrities. In order to test these hypotheses a survey on the topic is required. After a review of existing literature on the topic, more research is needed to answer the research questions developed and test the hypotheses generated. References Afandi, A.

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