Scholarly Commons

Instagram versus Finstagram: Possible Differences in Motivations and Personality

Social media sites give college students a way to show friends and family the daily events of their lives. Specifically, Instagram and its recent adaptation, Finstagram, have come to the forefront as an outlet to post pictures and videos. While Instagram promotes posting edited and filtered photos many people can see, Finstagram promotes posting unfiltered photos only a small audience can see. This study investigated the relationship between Instagram and Finstagram use, motivations, personality, and self-esteem. We predicted that exclusivity, escapism, and self-expression would be the main motivations of Finstagram use. We also predicted that high self-esteem and personality, specifically extraversion, would be correlated with Finstagram use. Results showed mixed support for our hypotheses. In accordance with our prediction, the main motivations for Finstagram use were exclusivity and self-expression. Escapism was only a secondary motivation. Results also confirmed that extraversion is significantly correlated with Finstagram use. Contrary to our prediction, self-esteem was not correlated with Finstagram use.