How Instagram Can Improve Its Platform to Support Positive Mental Health
I took a 21-day break from Instagram to better my mental health. After what was meant to be a New Years Resolutions to take better care of myself, I may never return to Instagram.
As a product designer, I feel it is Instagram’s responsibility to make effective changes in their digital product in favor of the audiences it serves.
The Social Dimema premiered on Netflix in January 2020, provoking how damaging social media is from the designers that helped build the platforms. Featuring former Google, Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter designers and scientists specialized in data, social psychology, and internet research.
The film includes how social media can be a powerful tool for connection. However, the former big tech employees dive into the manipulation techniques used by social media companies to addict their users and the psychology leveraged to achieve this end.
The documentary also touches upon how user actions on online platforms are watched, tracked, measured, monitored, and recorded. Companies then mine this human-generated capital to increase engagement, growth, and advertising revenue.
“We’re the product. Our attention is the product being sold to advertisers.” — Justin Rosenstein, former engineer Facebook and Google, co-founder of Asana
The film is a reminder of these platforms’ power over our lives, with some pretty eye-opening insights and statistics. Watching the film as an addictive consumer of social media, it inspired me to make a change to support my mental health. As a product designer, it got me thinking about ways the platform can make impactful changes.
Three changes Instagram can make to better the effects it has on mental health:
Remove Likes
Instagram announced in 2019 the platform would be testing hiding the like count on photos. Instagram won’t be getting rid of like counts altogether; users will still be able to see how often a post of theirs has been liked. However, these like counts won’t be displayed to followers anymore, and won’t appear in public Instagram feeds.
“When we were making the like button, our entire motivation was ‘can we spread positivity and love in the world?’ The idea that fast forward to today and teens would be getting depressed when they don’t have enough likes or it could be leading to political polarisation was nowhere on our radar.” — Justin Rosenstein, former engineer at Facebook and Google, co-founder of Asana
Current testing is still ongoing in Canada, Japan, Australia, and Brazil. Hiding likes would be a massive step for the platform in acknowledging the mental health crisis it causes. The roll-out of the hidden like count has been slow in the US, with limited users experiencing the feature.
The likes for your eyes only would be a shift in the toxic comparisons and depression caused by likes. One can only hope for the widespread release of the change.
Call Attention To Cosmetic Alterations
Increased social media use has been related to body image concerns. Psychologists found robust cross-cultural evidence linking social media use to body image concerns, dieting, body surveillance, a drive for thinness, and self-objectification in adolescents.
“Visual platforms like Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat deliver the tools that allow teens to earn approval for their appearance and compare themselves to others. The most vulnerable users, researchers say, are the ones who spend most of their time posting, commenting on and comparing themselves to photos. One study found that female college students who did this on Facebook were more likely to link their self-worth to their looks. Interestingly, while girls report more body image disturbance and disordered eating than boys — studies have shown both can be equally damaged by social media.” — Time
With endless editing apps, filters, and AR, Instagram Stories display when a photo uses a filter. The filter tag also directs to the creator of the filter. The active filters are often easily recognized as altered images, as most of us don’t have glittering butterflies or flowers hovering in space around our faces.
If Instagram has a notice on Stories in place for when people use a filter to alter their appearance, why not apply the same method to the feed?
With the growing popularity of Facetune and the addition of third-party images that allow users to alter their original appearance dramatically, it can be challenging to identify if an image is changed. These photo editing apps contribute to the nature of “flawless” Instagram photos, setting unrealistic beauty and body images.
When a photo from Facetune is saved, Facetune is embedded in the image, then later uploaded to Instagram. Instagram could recognize an image as a Facetune or third-party image and label a “Cosmetically Altered” sticker onto the photo.
As common as photo altering is, no one wants to be called out for it. The addition of this feature would discourage cosmetic altering on the platform.
“You’re All Caught Up”
Instagram launched a “You’re All Caught Up” message to show users have seen all content posted from the accounts you follow. However, the scrolling does not end there. Accounts you do not follow will appear beyond this message to continue the cycle of scrolling through a sea of endless new content.
“To make scrolling more difficult, we need to increase the friction between us and the behavior.” — Grant Collins.
To stop the scrolling, the “You’re All Caught Up” needs to end the content, and it needs to disrupt the behavior.
Instagram claims to take mental health seriously, but it is a money-making machine under the Facebook umbrella. In 2020, Facebook found itself often at the attention of Capitol Hill. The US government sued Facebook for becoming a monopoly and may have the company sell Instagram and Whatsapp.
“One company owning four of the most popular social networking and communication apps, at best, can be described as a data monopoly.” — Taha Yasseri, BBC
Facebook could be forced to sell the company, which they initially purchased Instagram in 2012 for $1 billion. Instagram’s worth today is estimated at $100 billion.
After the departure from Facebook, will Instagram shift towards meeting its users' needs rather than catering towards advertisers' pockets?
