# Motives for Instagram Use and Topics of Interest among Young Adults
## 2 Theoretical Background  
### Social Interaction with Uses and Gratifications Theory  
An exceedingly high proportion of modern people have internet addiction. Approximately 77% of young people between the ages of 18 and 24 indicate that they pick up and check their smartphones before doing anything else [19]. comScore Media Metrix observed the total digital population in Taiwan to be 14.385 million people in 2016. A large chunk of this population are heavy internet users. In 2016, over half of Taiwan's population accessed the internet via mobile devices every month. Thus, Taiwan is a country with an extremely high mobile device usage [20], and most usage involves posting on and browsing through social media. Social media is a system that operates on likes, social recognition, and social affirmation, and its primary operational meaning is based on the numbers of views and followers [5]. Messages on Instagram undergo artificial processing and editing. Whether Instagram users are aware of their own behavior and what motivates them to use and even become addicted to Instagram are issues worth investigating.  
The social function of Instagram is that it enables users to contact and interact with society or relieve anxiety and tension. In other words, Instagram provides evidence for the uses and gratifications theory. The primary research methods involving this theory include surveys, experiments, and psychological tests; the contents and meaning that it explores include motive, choice behavior, and reactions [21]. [PERSON] proposed the concept of audience features, among which there are two classical features: Whether they receive media alone or interact with others, audiences are contextualized by the location of dissemination and other features [22]; when audiences become submerged in the scenario, they can engage in a synchronous manner and offer responses. [PERSON] once described audience research as a stalemate between two sides: the media industry, which seeks to control audience behavior, and the audience, which aim to satisfy their own media needs [23]. In other words, Instagram users also meet their own needs via the usage process. [PERSON] & [PERSON] divided audience research into five major categories: effects, uses and gratifications, literary criticism, cultural study, and reception analysis [24].  
The gratification is a mental state rather than a type of behavior and is the psychological satisfaction that users derive from their experience of media usage. Evaluating the uses and gratifications is based on user attitude toward the media, which varies with personal beliefs, values, and preferences [25]. Studies in the past have allowed users to define their own behavior [26]. The core motive behind media usage is to solve various social needs or enable self-adjustment and relaxation in individual usage [27]. Users are considered active and motivated media users who can control their own usage experience. Thus, media research in recent years has focused on understanding the source of motivation [28]. The typical needs in the uses and gratifications theory are broad forms of motivation, including information, socialization, entertainment, and escape [29]. Motivation is an important indicator in the prediction of human behavior, and motivation is the foundation of the uses and gratifications theory. Different motives will result in different media usage behavior, online consumption behavior, and attentional behavior, all of which come from the uses and gratifications theory. The satisfaction of certain motives during the process of media usage evokes certain responses, and the degree of satisfaction varies depending on the motive. Thus, the behavior produced will naturally vary as well. We therefore hypothesized that users have varying preferences with regard to Instagram that are associated with their different expectations of the social media and the sense of satisfaction that they seek to gain through Instagram.