How many hashtags are too many hashtags?

Kamilah Kashanie
#TVRA4040
Published in
4 min readDec 7, 2017

#Medium #Journalist #Instagram #TVRA4040

The past few weeks have expanded my photography skills beyond what I was anticipating. Posting a photo-a-day (or at least trying to) comes with the added pressure of posting GOOD photos every day. Why post a picture if you’re not going to get any likes? This trope of social media forced me to think about qualities like lighting, colors, hashtags, creative captions, and even little things like emojis. It all comes together to create a creative and aesthetically pleasing Instagram post.

A challenge like this also gives you an immediate insight into the types of people who are following you on Instagram. Ultimately the likes you get from people are contingent on whether or not they care about what you’re posting or how it affects them. If I post a picture of something that hinges on an inside joke, only the people in that circle will care. As with things that people relate to, they’re much more likely to give you that coveted double tap. About two weeks into this experiment I realized that my most liked posts, are pictures of me and boyfriend. Because if there’s one thing that everyone can relate to, it’s young love. And I’m not ashamed to admit, I milked it.

For some context, only two pictures on my Instagram have more likes than the ones featuring my boyfriend, and one is my high school graduation picture. I also realized that people like to see things that make them happy. A guaranteed image to make someone smile, is someone else smiling. While I’ve tried to post the “pouty”, “sexy”, “smizing” pictures, the reality is that I have the facial structure of a 16 year old. So smiling is my best bet. And coupled with that, smiling is a part of my personality. The people that know me, know me to have a smile. And it’s those people who scroll down Instagram and want to see the version of Kamilah that they associate with the most.

I’d like to say that the thing I learned about Instagram is to be yourself, but that isn’t the case with every Instagram account. There are countless examples of people living completely separate lives on their social media for the sake of likes. And that works for them and that’s fine. So I think the overall concept that I took from my experience is to find what works for you. Your social media is your voice, it’s your way of describing yourself to the world. So what do you want people to see you as? What vibes, messages, or feelings do you want to put out there.

One picture I’m particularly proud of is the one I posted for World Mental Health Day. I used this opportunity to talk about my struggle with anxiety and panic attacks in college, and also to encourage those who may be going through the same thing. Other than my parents, this was the first time I spoke about my anxiety in a public forum and it was terrifying to post. But it was so worthwhile. Afterwards I had people texting me and messaging me to tell me how proud they were, and even asking for help with dealing with their own anxiety or how to help someone they knew who was struggling. It was exhilarating to know that something I posted on Instagram was having an impact outside of getting “likes”.

I also learned that I don’t need Instagram for my validation. Don’t get me wrong, likes are great, and I like getting them. It feels good to post something and have 100+ people tell you that you look good. But this process also turned everyone and everything around me into a photo opportunity. I can’t count how many times I asked the people around me (mostly my boyfriend) to take a dozen pictures of me so I could choose what to post. When you look around at the world as nothing more than likes, you miss out on precious moments and time that could be spent having a real conversation with someone. And while pictures last forever, you can’t get back time.

I’d like to say that I’ll be taking a break from Instagram after this but I probably wont. I will however be using my platform to speak out more about the things that matter to me. And in that, hopefully, I can use my social media as more than a vehicle for likes, but for cognitive change.

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