Well-Being Associations with Daily Activities on Instagram and Moderation by Beliefs About Social Media Addiction

Debates about the effects of social media on well-being are ongoing, fueled in part by mixed and weak associations found in published research. Researchers have relied heavily on measuring time spent on social media (i.e., “screen time”) and self-reports that fail to capture the detail of young people’s day-to-day activities and interactions on branded apps like Instagram. Further, inconsistent findings may be due in part to beliefs young people hold about social media’s role in harming well-being. This study proposes to obtain direct and objective application data from Instagram to test whether specific activities and interactions (posting, liking, commenting, browsing) are related to daily well-being. We will also test whether these associations are shaped by young people’s pre-existing beliefs about the addictive properties of social media. Young adults aged 18 to 25 who use Instagram daily will be recruited online. Participants will complete 15 daily surveys distributed semi-randomly during a 30-day period during which time Instagram application data will be gathered passively, using Instagram account authorization flow enabled as part of Meta and the Center for Open Science’s Instagram Data Access Pilot (Meta Platforms, Inc., 2025). Multilevel linear models will test confirmatory and exploratory research questions. Results and discussion will follow with the Stage 2 report.