Content Analysis of Young People's Attitude towards the Positive and Negative Effects of Instagram

Social networks have become widely popular among young people in recent years. This research was conducted with the aim of analyzing the content of young people's attitude towards the positive and negative effects of Instagram. The approach of the current research is qualitative and its method is qualitative content analysis. Among the students of Islamic Azad University of Shiraz, 13 students were selected in a purposeful way until the theoretical saturation of the data and were subjected to a semi-structured interview. Coding of the interviews was done in three steps and manually. The coding of the interviews shows 5 components of increasing awareness (with the subcomponents of enhancing awareness in various fields, learning techniques and skills, increasing media literacy), strengthening relationships (with the subcomponents of awareness of the conditions of friends and relatives, holding celebrations and occasions and strengthening group connection), addiction to Instagram (with the subcomponents of excessive use of Instagram, failure to handle other tasks and unpleasant mental states when not using Instagram), physical and psychological problems (with the subcomponents of negative effects on sleep, negative effects on attention and concentration, experiencing negative and unpleasant emotions and physical pains) and disruption in social ties (with the subcomponents of increased social comparisons, inequality and injustice, mistrust of others and social scandal). According to these findings, it can be concluded that the expansion of social networks, especially Instagram, in recent years has been associated with positive and negative individual and social consequences, which are necessary and vital to pay attention to by the relevant institutions.