Socializing on Instagram: social relationships and youth emotions during the covid-19 pandemic

Abstract

During the pandemic, while the exclusion of young people from accessing the Internet and mobile devices was evident, the use of social networks on the Internet was also maximized. This article was prepared based on information obtained in a research carried out with young university students from different social identities who are inserted in Instagram. The aim was to collect the manifestations and expressions of emotions in their profiles to analyze the social relations through the interaction in this social network during the Covid-19 pandemic, in the period from July 2021 to June 2022. To do so, we used information obtained through ethnography on the Internet and interviews with these young people. The results showed that during the pandemic there was an increase in interactions between the profiles of these young people on Instagram. In this context, according to the young people, their social relationships were established by managing more positive than negative emotions between the publications shared by them in the feed and in the stories.