Down the Rabbit Hole — Detox Teas & Instagram
For my blog about “going down the rabbit hole” I decided I wanted to uncover a thing that gets advertised to me heavily. I am not sure why Instagram decided to heavily advertise this celebrity endorsed “detox” tea to me, but it is something that a lot of people are trying to get rid of. The tea itself is incredibly misleading, as all it does it get rid of water weight and doesn’t actually help anyone in the long run.
According to Instagram there is Instagram feeds of “wellness” influencers everywhere. But to date, #DetoxTea is more popular than any of them with 850,000 tags on Instagram. This creates a fake ideal that celebrities are actually endorsing these teas as something that works instead of what they actually are — which is a way to get more money. Ads on instagram don’t start or stop with things like detox teas.
Instagram has 1 BILLION monthly active users, which is one of the highest traffic platforms of all social media. They are the third most used social media platform behind Facebook and YouTube (but Facebook also owns Instagram but whatever). On top of that, 64% of 18–29 year olds use Instagram, making them the majority on the platform. This makes them the perfect target audience for instagram ads, and for things like detox tea. From casually scrolling on my own instagram right off the bat I was given two pretty similar ads.
Why was I given these ads? I am not sure. There has always been talk online that there is an ad algorithm that takes what you shop for online and gives you ads that you are likely to click on. Here is where I started to go down the rabbit hole to better understand the idea of “ad algorithms”.
According to Instagram, three factors principally determine the content in your feed: interest, timeliness, and relationship. What you frequently view or visit on instagram is what the app then decides you like, and the algorithm will push out more of that topic. To take my own ad examples, I did recently online shop for my summer trip to Korea, both on my phone and on my laptop. Because I showed interest in clothes I started to get clothes ads on my feed. That is one of the three factors that determine the content.
What is really interesting is that Facebook is the parent company to Instagram. I’m sure everyone remembers the Facebook scandal that happened last year (in 2018). For those who don’t, here is the run down according to Fortune.com. During the summer of 2014, the U.K. affiliate of U.S. political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica hired a Soviet-born American researcher, Aleksandr Kogan, to gather basic profile information of Facebook users along with what they chose to “Like.”
This goes to show that the American people value their privacy. More and more people in today’s day-in-age are scared of how much their phones and computers are watching them. It isn’t hard to be scared when scandals are happening with some of the biggest social media platforms. Are we, as a people, really safe from the social media platforms we use the most? Is this what all advertising is going to become? and should we be holding the people that run this companies more accountable for their actions? While we as consumers won’t stop using social media, the need for transparency in companies is necessary now more than ever.
Instagram is a very powerful platform, that many people use around the world. Capitalist societies will always allow for businesses to sneak around their consumers. This is not the first time something like this has happened, and the Facebook scandal won’t be the last. Companies will continue to use data from our phones and computers to help persuade people into thinking one way or the other. Many people think that what happened with Facebook is what allowed Donald Trump to win the presidential election over Hillary Clinton. There are always going to be corporation that are willing to be paid out by someone wanting to achieve a goal.
As for the detox teas, I don’t think I’ll ever understand why instagram advertises so heavily, and why it seems like it’s all that famous people can promote to their audiences. The detox teas themselves being debunked as fake will do nothing to change the minds of those who are influenced by people they idolize. It is up to celebrities — a society — to stop promoting things that are harmful. Instead, be like Jameela Jamil who is spearheading the act of calling out people who support things that could hurt you or others.
