Instagram, the most popular social media platform among 13- to 21-year-olds in America, is often accused of causing mental health harms to young users. However, the same population also uses the app to seek, and find, help.

A first-of-its-kind study led by Drexel researchers examined these asks for help and how they were received.
They found that young people on Instagram are more likely to share negative experiences — ranging from everyday stress to severe mental health issues — with friends and online acquaintances in private messages on Instagram. Most of the time, these disclosures are met with positive peer support.

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Instagram messages revealed how youth use private DMs to seek and offer peer support.

“Due to logistical challenges and privacy concerns there has been very little research on how this age group interacts in private online conversations — particularly to exchange support,” said Afsaneh Razi, an assistant professor in the College of Computing & Informatics, who was a co-author of the paper. “This study is the first of its kind to provide insight and lay out a framework for how the platform could offer support for young people who are looking for help in everyday difficulties.”

From a dataset of 7 million Instagram messages, researchers analyzed messages seeking help to understand how and why youth initiate peer support conversations in private messages and the types of support they received.

Mental health concerns came up in most of the conversations; the topic was usually introduced in casual conversations or one-on-one chats before evolving into a disclosure and an ask for help. Further research could demonstrate the demographics of these younger users; how teens can grow support networks both online and in person; and how social media platforms could integrate tools to provide guidance and resources in a conversation, possibly through artificial intelligence.

The findings, which were supported by the National Science Foundation, were published by the Association of Computing Machinery at the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. The authors also included Jina Huh-Yoo and Pamela Wisniewski, and Drexel students Diep N. Nguyen and Sampada Regmi contributed.