Instagram is one of the worst platforms for mental health, and addiction is also destroying society. Still, Instagram used to be a great site. We were founded by Kevin Systrom, who rejected offer letters from the biggest tech giants, Twitter, Facebook, and Google, intending to make a positive change to the internet.
He designed the app with well-designed algorithms, and they chose the ads themselves individually. This is why they have rejected data harvesting and many other things to keep the new social media healthy. Thanks to Instagram, photo sharing and photography have completely revolutionized, which gives Instagram 10 million users in 10 months (1 million active users within two months of its launch).
Instagram Early Adoptions
Facebook acquired Instagram for $1 billion in early April 2013 with 13 employees, and since then, Facebook has seen a decline in its user base for the very first time and continues to decline. They solved various problems in their early stages, like faster upload times for images, which is the major problem with other social media applications, which were much earlier than other applications.
In its early stages, Instagram only had 13 employees, which is a stressful task. Hard work on the app exploded on the internet with countless numbers and potential, crossing June 2011. After the backing of Meta, Instagram quickly got video and photo tagging, which were already on Facebook. On top of that, Instagram rose to 50 million users after three weeks of acquisition and 100 million within a year.
So, how does Instagram turn into an evil business model?
The biggest problem they solved was loading time. Low-quality photos look good by adopting a 1:1 ratio, which helps images look great on any given phone. This also helps to save time; smaller photos mean less uploading and loading time.
From a healthy and positive social media perspective, Instagram has turned into the worst social media app for mental health. Facebook’s internal research shows that about 400 million Instagram users feel unattractive (Facebook’s internal report suggests that 40% of Instagram users in the UK and the US feel unattractive since the day they started using Instagram).
23% of teen girls feel bad about their bodies, and Instagram has worsened it. 1 in 3 girls has body image issues, blaming Instagram for a rise in anxiety, eating disorders, and depression. 13% UK and 6% US desire suicide, and these were just 22 years old and younger, which counts about 22 million users alone in the US (5 million+ active users every day).
Meta (the parent company of Instagram) completely ignores this issue and puts minimal effort into addressing it. After publishing the reports, Meta published two decks of annotations. Additionally, Instagram had plans to release an Instagram for Kids (under the age of 13) in the past. Still, they have paused the development after backlash.
What makes Instagram toxic?
Some analyses show that it might get more toxic in the next five years. We have seen Instagram now more frequently update its Terms of Use, like selling your photos without notifying or paying royalty (to the user).
Now the horrific part is that, in the early days, Instagram only had 13 employees working, so for them to monitor Instagram content ultimately feels powerless. The app gets filled with self-advertising for Deller; even today, it’s a few clicks away from buying drugs on Instagram. Research says the Instagram algorithm connects teens directly with drug dealers. To prevent this, Instagram has been updated by making accounts private as a default for people under 16 and banning related drugs and drug dealing.
Vice Documentary from 2021
This documentary shows how money laundering targets teens through Instagram, which often goes towards riskier schemes. In this case, either the victim lands in prison or is caught by other criminals.
Instagram breaks its promise.
They initially confirmed that they didn’t have any plans to turn photos into ads. Still, after acquisitions, Facebook brought promotional ads alongside advertising tools. Not to mention, Facebook had to make Instagram profitable, which worked since there were only specific brands to advertise.
Facebook undermines Instagram and Instagram Reality, the person behind filters.
Filters were built into the apps, through which users could easily enhance photos. Still, people started enhancing photos in other, less honest ways. Enhancing images through Photoshop, Lightroom, or any third-party photo editing makes it worse. You can find that un-reality (Instagram Reality) on Reddit called Instagram Reality Baybeh!
Instagram is slowly going towards such a false sense of happiness. Making it worse, the new service offers a fake audience (buying bot accounts as followers). Many celebrities have fake followers on Instagram; for instance, @KylieJenner has almost 106.2 million suspicious followers.
Even after you know that it’s fake, it will affect your mindset and mental health; using Instagram every day with such things leads you to compare your life with other lives subconsciously. This doesn’t affect everyone in the same way. Still, among other social media, Instagram rates “The Words for User Mental Health.” They intentionally ignore this problem; even after knowing these things, teens can’t get rid of it because of all of Facebook’s advanced algorithms, which make a person addicted.
Instagram doesn’t have enough employees to fix this.
Instagram’s growth is breaking Facebook’s metrics. That’s why, to save Facebook, they have limited the hiring of new employees (8% that year). A small team can’t accommodate new users, which could be a good thing, but the internal team has to overwork.
The co-founder of Instagram stepped down, and Kevin and Mike decided to leave the company. Some reports suggest Mark Zuckerberg intentionally made his life miserable and wanted them to do more for Facebook. From kicking out and enjoying complete control of Instagram. So, when Instagram didn’t have any vision for the future, this left Instagram aimless. Soon Instagram became Instagram from Facebook, now Instagram from Meta.” This is why Instagram was baked entirely into the ad model.
Genuinely terrifying vision
Most people don’t feel good when they quit the app, not because they haven’t done anything productive during that session. Mainly because you have spent time looking at how good other people are (How good they look, how good their holiday is, how good their singing is.)
The flip side is that humans prioritize negative information compared to positive news. Nothing surprising; no one wants to share things they’re embarrassed about. That’s how Human Social Validation and Status work. So, it looks like 99% of the world is a highlight reel after seeing other people highlight and after going into your world and seeing something missing.
Opposite Site of the Wall, this gives us the ability to rewrite our lives (Remake your life Online) and allows us to tell the story that we want to tell. Meanwhile, it alternatively makes your life unbelievably insecure about our real lives.
Instagram is getting better and better at learning about its users to share similar content made for them. This is good because you don’t need to search for content. Still, in the long-term, it’s changing people by your preference tweaking, which changes your opinion, creating your own beliefs and a more related group of people because social media can quickly reinforce your views.
This is why Instagram has Discover instead of Trending to serve the most targeted content instead of generalizing content.
At last, Instagram is the most significant regulatory failure of the decade, says Stratechery’s Ben Thompson; Kevin (Co-Founder of Instagram) says Mark’s power is unprecedented and un-American. With time, Facebook started involving in Instagram. Like Facebook, Instagram has now started sending more notifications and emails to boost engagement.