UW: Parents don’t distress, your teens go to Instagram out of ‘boredom’

In a world where the digital landscape is as vast as the oceans, teens navigate through waves of content on platforms like Instagram. Amidst the rising concerns about social media’s impact on mental health, a study from the University of Washington (UW) casts a new light on the subject, revealing that boredom, not distress, is the prevailing emotion among teens on Instagram.

The research, which tracked 25 U.S. teens, unveiled that Instagram often serves as a digital refuge from having nothing else to do. Teens would dive into the app’s depths, swimming through a sea of content, not in search of validation or escape from reality, but for the simple cure to their boredom. They sought treasures in the form of interesting posts to share with friends, the true lifeline of connection in the otherwise monotonous “content soup.”

“A lot of the talk about social media is at the extremes,” lead author Rotem Landesman, a UW doctoral student in the Information School, said. “You either hear about harassment or bullying — which are real phenomena — 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.”

As they navigated these waters, the teens developed navigation skills to steady their journey — liking, following and unfollowing to tailor their feeds, and swiftly bypassing any aggravating content. The researchers, observing these patterns, suggested design changes to the app, such as reflective prompts and features to streamline feed curation.

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Presented at the ACM Interaction Design and Children Conference in the Netherlands, the study aimed to explore the everyday, ordinary experiences of teens on Instagram, moving beyond the polarized discourse of cyberbullying and utopian tech narratives.

“We saw teens turning to Instagram in moments of boredom, looking for some kind of stimulation,” co-senior author Alexis Hiniker, a UW associate professor in the iSchool, said. “They 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’s really buried in gimmicks, attention-grabbing features, content that’s sometimes upsetting or frustrating and a ton of junk.”

The researchers equipped the teens with mindfulness techniques and a custom app, AppMinder, to capture their emotional states in real time. Every three hours, after five minutes of Instagram use, the app prompts a survey, capturing the teens’ feelings and reasons behind them. Over a week, the teens provided a tapestry of responses, painting a picture of their digital interactions.

Interviews with the teens further illuminated their Instagram experience. They described turning to the app in moments of boredom, seeking stimulation. While the platform did offer moments of closeness and connection, these were often buried under layers of gimmicks and irrelevant content.

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The algorithm’s offerings were frequently off the mark, yet the teens persisted, sifting through post after post to find that one meme or fashion nugget to share in direct messages — the app’s most valued feature. To enhance their experience, they employed various strategies:

• Curating their feeds to highlight content that sparked joy rather than boredom or discomfort.
• Scrolling past or logging off from content that induced negative feelings.
• Adjusting Instagram’s features, like hiding like-counts or disabling notifications, to minimize adverse emotions.

The study’s findings suggest that while Instagram’s allure may be waning under the weight of its own content, it still holds pockets of value for teens. It reminds us that beneath the surface of boredom lies a quest for connection. The study notes with mindful design, the platform can better serve as a compass guiding them to the meaningful interactions they seek.

Bill Kaczaraba is a content editor at MyNorthwest. You can read his stories here. Follow Bill on X and email him here.