11 Ways Instagram Is Using You
So we all know the basics, right? The model on the billboard is photoshopped. Reality TV isn’t actually reality. Clicked likes on a screen don’t directly correlate to people liking you in real life. Then why do we let our social media pour into us so harshly?
If you’re like most social-media-ites, I’ll bet that you’ve recently felt some form of anxiety before posting a photo to Instagram. Should I post this picture or this one where my head is slightly turned? What filter do I use? What should I hashtag? Is that too many hashtags? Can I post more than once in a day? You’ll even turn to your friend and ask if the caption you typed out is lame. Emoji or no emoji? Then comes the freakout. It’s been 30 seconds and I don’t have a like.
Instagram happens to be a favorite social media platform of mine. We get to communicate and share our lives through our most hand-picked, trendy photos! After several years of being an active user of the beautifully-run application, however, I found some self-inflicted flaws in the system. Here are several ways that Instagram is essentially using the user.
- You’ve been convinced by popular ‘Grammers that a perfect tan, a thigh gap, and posing by the sea is what everyday life is. http://elitedaily.com/life/culture/x-pro-ii-valencia-instagram-choose-neither/614571/
2. In order to say “Happy Birthday” to your mom, you need to post a picture of you and her on an app she hardly knows how to use.
3. You feel if you don’t post regular candids of you and your significant other, it’s not a hip, healthy, and loving relationship.
4. To feel like you’ve “got it goin’ on” you just took 52 selfies to approve of one to post and then added a song lyric as your caption.
5. You’ve scrolled through a generic hashtag only to find your eyes maimed by some random, graphic porn image. Or you’ve been followed by some spam account.
6. You wasted half your day taking a picture, trying to choose one, editing, and captioning a post.
7. You desperately want more followers no matter how many you have. And some people would be willing to pay cold hard cash for bigger numbers. http://iag.me/socialmedia/4-reasons-why-you-should-not-buy-followers/
8. You saw what that one girl posted about her adventurous Saturday, which made your Saturday look pretty shabby, so now you feel the unrest that you have to attain something to match or one-up that Saturday.
9. You were bullied online, whether it was a rude remark in the comments section or someone posted something related to you that made your gut lurch. http://cyberbullying.org/cyberbullying-on-instagram
10. You need to feel liked by receiving “likes.” In the Instagram world, double-tapped hearts that pop up on your screen seem to put your own heart rate at ease.
11. You’re actually addicted, just like you would be to any other thing that makes you feel good for a while. And no matter the negative side effects, you’ll keep going back for more. http://www.self.com/flash/social-media/2014/11/instagram-addiction-real/
