The relationship between self-esteem and social comparison on social media among the Maltese populations

Abstract

Social media has become a ubiquitous aspect of many individuals’ lives. Psychological research exhibited a correlation between self-esteem and online social comparison, focusing mainly on females and young people. The study’s aim was to explore the relationship between self-esteem (measured by the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (Rosenberg, 1965)) and social comparison on social media (measured by the INCOM (Iowa-Netherlands Comparison Orientation Measure) Scale revised for Social Media (Yang et al., 2018)), with regards to gender and age. Thus, a quantitative methodology was adopted where an online survey was distributed on Facebook. The sample consisted of 199 Maltese participants aged between 18 and 69, of which 142 were females and 45 were males. Results showed that the self-esteem of young individuals, particularly of females, is more negatively impacted than that of males and older cohorts, after engaging in social comparison of ability and social comparison overall. Conversely, females and young people tend to have low self-esteem which makes them more vulnerable to engage in excessive online comparison. Sociocultural factors dominate mainly females and young individuals to conform to social ideals, such as physical appearance. Social comparison is not completely detrimental since opinion-based comparison was statistically significant to higher self-esteem. However, social comparison of opinion was non-significant to age and manifested no gender differences; implying certain Maltese attributes such as communitarianism which prevails within a small island context. These nonsignificant results might pertain to low sample size, therefore future research should comprise a larger sample of the Maltese population. Such research will aid in fostering more awareness on well-being especially on mental health, within the social media context hence, being crucial to the discipline of psychology.