My Instagram’s Insights
What the app showed me in the pandemic.
Looking back at my Instagram posts since the pandemic started, here’s what I see: My sourdough starter overflowing its container (always a bread baker, now it’s an obsession); views from the hikes we’ve taken, mental health breaks from the confines of our four walls; my husband and I in masks that I made from old pillowcases; me standing in line at the grocery store, distancing; a stuffed bear looking out the family room window, part of the neighborhood teddybear hunt to engage children on their new daily ritual — the family walk; screenshots of early Zoom meetings, like a sea of Hollywood-Square faces; a cake and candles next to the computer screen, our first Zoom birthday celebration; and my husband’s new home office, which has taken over the dining room, the happy dog asleep at his side.
What I see is my life: suburban, white, privileged, and protected.
I was first introduced to Instagram back in 2015. The social media app had been around for five years by then, had over 300 million users, and had been acquired by Facebook for a neat billion in cash and stock. I’d never seen it. The point: My lack of a social media presence and awareness — I was way behind the curve.
At the time, I read a New Yorker article about the journalist Jeff Sharlet and his foray into Instagram. He interviewed strangers, an eclectic group of people he encountered in his travels around the world, and posted their photos and their stories on the social media app. These were not the pretty, duck-pout photos of heavily made-up, celebrity faces from the early Instagram days.
Sharlet’s photos were gritty, often in black and white, and taken late at night, when he uncovered remarkable, difficult stories unfolding in unexpected places. Like Michael (38) and his sister Siobhan (20), homeless and drug-addicted in Dublin; and the 17-year-old queer Russian boy with scarred forearms and wrists named Harry; and Sergei, the not-yet-out, gay politician, who likened himself to the next Harvey Milk, last name and location withheld.
Each story was long and layered, impossible to tell in a few words. But Sharlet had realized what not many take advantage of on Instagram. Each post provides space for a caption 2,200 characters long, about 400 words. Yes the old adage says a picture is worth a thousand words, but what Sharlet was doing, with the photo and long caption, said much more.
Like Sharlet, I’m a journalist. I tell other people’s stories. Here he had married the photo and caption in a way I hadn’t seen before with a social media app. I loved what Sharlet was doing with the form: #photoessays.
Also at that time, I was a teaching assistant in an undergraduate class on personal essays, trying to coax twenty-five twenty-somethings to write a story that said something, that made you think. Tell me what happened, but tell me what that means to you too, I said. Tell the story under the story, what I call the heart story.
The class was called The Literary Selfie: The Art of Writing Autobiographically. The goal was for each student to write a 1,500-word personal essay, bringing personal experience and reflection to the page.
These students were born in the digital era and raised during a game-changing period for social media — Facebook, YouTube, Gmail, Snapchat, and Instagram, all ubiquitous, and their smart devices always in reach. When they entered class, they sat and stared at their phones until required to put them away. Out came the phones at break, and again as they walked out the door into the hallway at the close.
So we started with the selfie. Bring a photo that includes you — a selfie, I said. Any photo, your choice, old, new. They brought in photos like traveling with a friend in Spain on a semester abroad, a poker night with the boys, and a tender moment of a toddler with mom by the piano. Now, look at the photo, I said, and here comes the prompt: The story starts here.
Blank stares.
Ok, let’s start with some questions, I said. What’s happening in the photo? What do you want at that moment? What can’t we see beyond the frame? What isn’t being said? What connections can you make?
Things bubbled up. And they wrote. Their essays were personal and revealing. They shared their writing in a supportive workshop. They were quiet and listened. They asked discerning questions. They bonded. The photos and stories gave them a glimpse into their own lives and the lives of others and, I believe, a greater understanding of the world around them.
Fast forward a couple years, and I finally decide to jump on the Instagram wagon. I’m not a member of the confessional generations x, y, and z. I was raised in the earlier, “the less said the better,” times. But maybe I’m missing something, I thought. I’m a poor marketer and shy of self-promotion, maybe it could be good for business. Maybe Instagram will give me the tools and confidence to engage in social media, to put myself out there.
I approached Instagram with the same curiosity-tempered-with-caution that I approach most things. I read about it and then I took a class. Yes, I took an Instagram class. That’s pretty much how I go about learning anything new, like when I learned how to make sourdough bread. When I told my son I was taking an Instagram class, I could see his eyes roll through the phone. “Mom, you don ’t need to take a class to use Instagram,” which he followed with, “Why are you using Instagram anyway?”
In class with a handful of middle-aged women, I learned how to post photos, make stories, and add hashtags. My first posts were abysmal. The cat. A loaf of sourdough bread fresh from the oven. The other cat. I had no followers and wasn’t following anyone. But over the four class sessions, I started to get it.
People made their way into the photos. My writer friends at a reading, my husband and I on a visit to London, a family vacation in Canada, me at museums, in gardens, at concerts, on the beach, at the mountains, and more loaves of bread. I posted black and white polaroids pics from my youth on Throwback Thursdays. My goal wasn’t to collect a raft of followers, but some came, and I followed others too.
To do anything well takes practice and forming a habit takes time, so I gave myself a year. Post at least once or twice a week for a year. See what happens. What I thought I’d use for business quickly became personal.
Recently I saw that Jeff Sharlet has compiled his posts and stories, collected over two years on the road meeting strangers, into a book, This Brilliant Darkness: A Book of Strangers. Described as a visionary work of radical empathy, Sharlet’s photo essays take a deep dive into the darkness that surrounds us, documenting the people on the margins and their suffering. Sharlet found his medium, with iPhone photos, the Instagram app, and his tool of the trade — words. Sharlet found their heart stories.
It’s been a year since I took the Instagram class. Time to take stock. When I look at my Instagram pandemic-era posts, here’s what I see: My husband and I remain employed. We are white and college-educated, with jobs that we can do remotely. We aren’t on the front lines. We have health insurance and a safety net. We’ve been doing what we were told to do to blunt the curve. We stay home, wave to neighbors at a distance, and grocery shop once a week. I bake. We hike. We Zoom. And we are fine.
What my Instagram doesn’t show is what’s going on beyond the frame of my photos, that same question I asked my students to answer when they looked for the stories in their photos. That same thing Jeff Sharlet dug for in his interviews with the strangers in his photos. What can’t be seen?
I live in northern California, across the Bay from San Francisco. Although the number of deaths from COVID-19 in the city remains relatively low, the Asian American and black communities have been hit hardest. In the Bay Area and across the state, the Latino and black communities test positive for coronavirus and die from the disease at disproportionately higher rates, as much as twice as often.
Why? Marginalized and more vulnerable, with lower socioeconomic means, living and working conditions which leave them at greater risk, less access to adequate healthcare. Myriad reasons without good responses.
What my Instagram tells me: I’m one of the fortunate ones. But there’s more to it. I still haven’t gotten to the story beneath the photos, the heart of the story, so I go back to the questions I posed to my students.
What’s happening? What do I want at this moment? What connections can I make?
I’m managing during the pandemic as best I can. I’m scared and anxious sometimes, often I can’t sleep. I fear the uncertainty of the times. I feel isolated, like I’m in a bubble. I wonder how others less fortunate are managing. I can empathize, but I can’t fully understand what their experiences are like. I can’t know what they are feeling. I don’t know their pain.
What do I want? For this plague to pass. For everyone to be free from the threats posed by this virus. For life to be normal but different. For things to change. For this experience to be more than just something we get through. For the pandemic to transforms us. For us to step up, take responsibility, and care for each other. For good healthcare to be accessible to everyone. For everyone to have a safety net. For the legal system to be fixed and fair. For the world to be a kinder and gentler and more equitable place.
What connections can I make? We are afflicted by a virus that can infect and kill anyone, but it discriminates, because the discrimination is built into our society. For a long time, I feared social media, feared putting myself out there for people to see. And in truth, I’ve only dipped my toe in so far, but Instagram has helped me to see what lies behind and beyond. Truths that are often avoided but that need to be faced.
What next? I made it a year on Instagram, so maybe I’ll go for two. Take more photos and continue to take stock. I don’t know how to manage all the change we need, but I do know the one person I can change is me. And maybe I’ll take a page from Jeff Sharlet’s book — I’ll look deeper, ask more questions, and write that story — that I can do.
Andrea Firth is a writer, journalist, and teacher. She has an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from Saint Mary’s College of CA and is co-founder of Diablo Writers’ Workshop. Find out more here: andreaafirth.com
