Scrolling, safety and self-presentation: A grounded theory of social anxiety for Instagram millennials

Most people live with some form of mild social discomfort, but for those with social anxiety daily life is mired with social distress. With the advent of digital technology, those individuals now need to navigate their social worlds through a terrain of in-person and online engagement, and this influences how social anxiety manifests for them. In this investigation, 12 millennials were screened for social anxiety and reported using Instagram daily. They were administered open-ended interviews which were analysed using constructivist grounded theory principles. After the analysis, a strategic literature review was carried out to integrate the findings within the literature. Data from the participants led to a substantive formulation for understanding social anxiety in the information age. Three core categories emerged: exclusion, inferiority, and limitation. Those categories were then used to investigate social media processes for the participants. The findings indicate that socially anxious millennials in this study engaged in four main psychosocial processes online. The first is social comparison to others was indiscriminate online, the second was that assertive self-presenters were better able to make use of the new possibilities that Instagram presents. The third is that compensatory connection took place through voyeurism or watching others’ personal content. Finally, scrolling on Instagram seems to be serving a safety behaviour for those individuals. This research develops on a small but crucial body of literature which centralises the lived experience in understanding online engagement in the fields of cyberpsychology and counselling psychology. This study revealed the significance of Instagram engagement for those who struggle with social anxiety and clarifies how Instagram is integrated within their social experience.