Quotation:
“Most users used Instagram to distract themselves when they were having a hard time. Most also wished Instagram had given them better control of what they saw and helped connect them with people who had a similar experience,” Slide 2.
Comment:
This quote was number 4 on the list of Hard Life Moments on Instagram – Mental Health. Personally, I deleted Instagram a few months ago. I relate to the idea of distracting myself with the feed of Instagram. However, it wasn’t a good distraction. Even when I was successful in taking my mind off of one thing, it led to stressing out about my personal appearance. Instagram not only has influencers and models, it shows the feed of people you know. Yes, you can decide who to follow and who not to follow, but that soon didn’t matter because they started putting suggestions of who to follow; showing their profiles. It turned into something more commercial than anything social. I remember when I first got Instagram around 14 years old. I posted a picture of my dog. I saw that I got about 50 likes. To me, this was a lot. However, if I were to look at other people’s likes and comments, I felt as though I wasn’t popular enough. Instagram then gave the option of showing the number of likes on a post. I thought this was an interesting adjustment, but the whole point of Instagram was to see who could get the most likes, so it became less appealing for some. At the same time, Instagram was putting ads in between a few posts. This reminded me of Facebook. It became clear that they were trying to make more money with Instagram. This could be because it was reaching a “younger” audience, but I didn’t enjoy seeing a random ad when I was trying to look through posts. At one point, I only really went on Instagram to look at memes. They had pages dedicated to just memes. I decided to delete Instagram because I was noticing how often I would pick up my phone to check it, especially when I posted something. I wanted to see how many likes I got on a picture. It was addicting and diminishing at the same time. The comment about helping certain people connect was interesting. They mentioned that there was little control over what they were seeing.This means that the algorithms are not for the individual, but for what the creators want the viewers to see. This is a form of censorship in my opinion. If people want help connecting with people with similar situations, there shouldn’t be algorithms in the way of that.
Question:
Would you consider deleting Instagram? How do you think it would impact you?
