Is Instagram Taxing on Our Cognitive Abilities?
Recently Instagram made a huge change in their User interface and experience.
With the recent change in the interface — you can see that instagram has given the golden tab bar seat to its content consumption features such as Shop and Reels. It has pushed the content creation features to the less reachable position in the interface. Why do I say its less reachable— refer to the image below
This also means while using instagram most users tend to get even more tired until their brain learns the position of these new features. Why is instagram taking this huge change? What does if benefit by frustrating so many users?
To find the answer — we have to refer to the instagram algorithm.
Based on this algorithm, creators are tied to their seats. Most creators that I follow pose the same complaints that they get the most engagement only when they follow a particular trend on instagram. This is limiting their creative abilities.
Let’s come back to the change in the user interface and experience. From the above observation, we see that there are relatively less content creators on instagram and more content consumers. People have started using instagram to consume entertainment (Reels) and Products (Shop) more. Most users have shifted creating content for their stories rather than their instagram feed because the algorithm wouldn’t give them as much as the attention (likes) they want. From business perspective, instagram has evolved from a photo sharing app to an application where small scale businesses sell their products, this shift in their business model has helped them grow enormously in their revenue. The only question is — is it demanding too much from us? In this era of instant consumption of information at light speed has made our brains less attentive. Our cognitive abilities are slowing down with the increase in psychological disorders. These digital consumptions are taxing our cognitive abilities and making us spend energies in learning to use these applications. What do you think about it? Should Instagram think about “Consumerism” problem more seriously?
