Instagram: A Convoluted Reality and its Social Impact
Written by Malini Naicker and Rashmi Vats
The advent of social media in the late 2000s and early 2010s brought in a revolution of how people shared their personal lives. Along with a drastic increase in sharing, people also started using photographs to express their feelings and opinions.
By 2012, just two years after its launch, the social media sites garnered over 80 million users worldwide; by 2020, the number of users has increased to 1 billion people monthly.
Instagram, a photo-sharing social site, from its inception till today, has gradually transitioned from a mere photo-sharing app to a platform that offers people an outlet for expressing their cultural and political opinions as well as a career choice as Instagram models and businesses do very well economically. The sheer increase in its users per year bears witness to its power and hold over people’s lives.
Having such power over people can also trigger certain negative behaviour among the users and it is presenting a convoluted and fake reality of money, glitz and glamour to its young and vulnerable users. Such behaviour is manifested in various ways:
Manipulation of Body Image:
Appearances can be deceptive in the globalized ultra-technological world where a person can choose to look a certain way and to achieve their vision of ‘ideal body’ they use various apps and filters, ranging from mobile apps to silicone fillers.
Celebrities and many Instagram models, as well as common people often use various appearance enhancing apps, like the FaceApp or B612 to change their facial as well as bodily appearance. Although there is nothing wrong in wanting to look a certain way, when that desire begins to impact one’s self-image and confidence, then it becomes problematic.
Instagram, according to a survey published by Sage, does not directly impact anxiety level of a user, but the derived sense of self-worth based on one’s physical appearance makes the user anxious and have low self-esteem. Instagram itself has a wide range of filters that can enhance one’s appearance, helping them achieve their desirable self-image. This creates a gap between their real self and the self they present online, the gap is sometimes so huge that it creates a jarring identity which is neither here nor there. This gap impacts the mental health of the user quite negatively, lowering their self-esteem but at the same time driving up their narcissistic tendencies, disconnecting them to reality and making them long for a self that is not there, that is imaginative, created on Instagram via some filters.
Many psychologists have raised their concerns about these narcissistic values instilled by photo-sharing sites such as Instagram in young minds and its violent outcomes when young teens are exposed to a virtual reality of a glamourized world it urges them to do everything to achieve or in some cases violently steal it.
Worsening mental health of Instagram users:
The Royal Society of Public Health and Young Health Movement conducted a research on the mental health of users of various social media, in which Instagram was proved to be the worst social media platform for deteriorating mental health of its users.
People spend the most time on Instagram than with their family and friends. And when they see other people living a perfect life as displayed repeatedly on their profiles and stories, they form a disillusioned version of their friends’ reality. We start believing that their online happy, perfect personas are the real people, which is not the case. This leads to feelings of inadequacy of our lives not being as happy, beautiful and perfect like that of others. This gradually leads to anxiety disorders and depression.
Diversity of opinions marred:
Instagram works based on data that it collects through its algorithms that observe and record the likes and dislikes of its users. From the data the algorithm collects, it determines a certain personality of the user, based on which it presents them with similar profiles.
In other words, once the user presses the like button, the algorithm starts looking for similar pages and profiles for the user to notice. This creates a bubble-like atmosphere for the user where they are surrounded only by the things and people they like and opinions they agree with. Living in such a one-sided reality makes a person less tolerable towards diversity of opinions and makes their thought process less self-reflexive and more exclusive.
Especially in the political context, many world and local politicians have joined Instagram and have gained massive followings. Due to this, a huge number of people are becoming highly polarized, only following accounts of people with a particular political ideology, not being able to accept any opinion that does not match theirs which leads to online bullying and trolling.
This highly polarized and warped reality where their opinions are the only correct opinions, leads to limited development in cognition, especially in teenagers who are on Instagram and other such social media platforms, and a diminishing ability of critical perception, leading to masses that are blinded by shallow opinions and appearances.
Environmental Impact:
Instagram, in recent years, has added many new features to its user interface. One of the most popular is its business feature which allows any user to make their account into a business account.
The introduction of the business feature to Instagram has on the one side given many small businesses easy access to a huge consumer market, while on the other side, it has made several people vulnerable to enticing advertisements that are tailored especially for them, thanks to the above-mentioned algorithm.
Our modern world is a civilisation that is already struggling with huge environmental damage being caused by cheap clothes and single-use plastic being discarded in landfills and the ads placed through Instagram garner huge placements which contribute to the global wastage. Kylie Jenner, a huge Instagram celebrity-endorsed single-use plastic bottles, makeup with macro-plastics and cheap quality clothing. With her following, it garnered huge support and all this led to an outcry from marine conservative activists who were campaigning against macro-plastic lotions and sun creams.
What is the solution?
One argument for apps such as Instagram and their effect on society is that we as a civilisation, always move forward. As we have learned to live with other technological advances in the past, so we will also be able to find a way to live with the rapidly changing world of the 21st century.
A world that is run by AI and behaviour-determining algorithm, is going to produce a mass population with narcissist values which in turn would have a compassionate impact on our environment. But such a perspective lacks vision, ambition and kindness, instead, it keeps all its hopes on technology and drives to achieve their dreams in that convoluted fake reality.
In this convoluted high-tech world, one could only keep their hope in the humanity of human beings. Our planet has seen many conflicts and it still sustains life because of the humaneness of its creatures. Human beings have great potential to sustain and survive this world. The only hope is in teaching our young to be humble, kind and to be grounded in their reality instead of losing themselves in a fake convoluted world. Then no amount of glitz and glamour would be able to entice and entreat the young minds into its fake reality, even Instagram.