Instagram is taking over the world it seems. Well the internet world at least. I don’t think I make it through a day without either going on Instagram, or someone saying “should I Instagram this?”
Instagram allows people to share their pictures. Pictures of anything. When you go on Instagram you see people posting pictures of themselves, their friends and family and of course their food. Instagram also uses filters to allow people to edit the pictures that they post.
But does this app bring larger consequences? Are people becoming too obsessed with vanity? Is it all about looking good or getting people to think you look good? Maybe it’s all of these things.
Many people think this generation is just too obsessed with themselves, and that social media does not help in any way. I do not think that social media is a bad thing, far from that in fact. Social media brings so many positive things to the table but I do think that there are some harms and consequences that come with certain types of social media.
“You spend so much time creating flattering, idealized images of yourself, sorting through hundreds of images for that one perfect picture, but you don’t necessarily grasp that everybody else is spending a lot of time doing the same thing,” Catalina Toma of the Department of Communication Arts at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, said as reported through Jessica Winter from slate.com and continues by saying “after spending lots of time carefully curating and filtering your images, you spend even more time staring at other people’s carefully curated and filtered images that you assume they didn’t spend much time on.”
People want to feel good about themselves. But determining your self worth based upon the amount of likes your photo gets is not healthy. It most definitely does not prove your worth. While there is nothing wrong with taking pictures and posting the ones you like, should your world be centered around the amount of people who liked a photo you posted? Probably not.
With apps like Instagram the only thing that matters is how good something looks. There is no depth to it. If it is a good looking person, or a pretty place or anything else that is visually appealing, it automatically gets more attention, and when it doesn’t reach that standard for what is set it just is disregarded. So the more likes and the more followers one has the better. People strive to become “Instagram famous” where it means you have been accepted because you have a large following or have photos that have managed to get incredible amounts of likes.
I personally love Instagram, and I do not see myself not using it anytime in the near future. It just depends on the person. If the person wants to strive for as many followers as they want then that is their own personal choice. Everyone has their own personal reasons for using social media and I think that is what makes it so special. Instagram was made to allow others to share pictures. So share away, but remember that the number of likes you get on a photo does not define you.
