Let me start off by saying that I am not above Instagram. It is quite ironic for me to be on Instagram and tell you why I hate it; in fact, I am actually a pretty avid user of this social media platform. I find Instagram stories very helpful in catching up with others and staying connected to friends even when we are miles apart. However, for those who know me, I have a distaste for common, basic things, and I enjoy doing critical analysis. Half of the reasons why I was sad one month ago came from Instagram, so yes, I do have a history with love-hating on this platform. Here are the top 5 reasons why I believe that Instagram is not that great of a platform for young people, why I dislike Instagram.
(All opinions are mine. I did fact-checked this, I'm 120% sure I'm right. You don't have to agree with me though.)
Let us get the creepy computer stuff out of the way first: Instagram is collecting data on us and spying everyone using the platform. Now, I admit that I am overstating this on two levels: one, we are willingly giving them our information when we agreed to their terms and conditions, so that's on us after all. But on the second level, what they are doing is not illegal. Seling data without consent is illegal, but data collection on users is not a crime. That is creepy.
I am going to use one example to illustrate my point: the alt texts. The official purpose of this feature is "for the benefit of people with visual impairments", but personally, I believe that there is something more sinister going on. I came across this feature while I was using web-based Instagram; I had zero knowledge of that beforehand. While I was waiting for my feed to load, I saw creepy messages of "this picture contains: people, uniforms, classroom". (I had a screenshot on this but I cannot find it), and there was this auto-generated line for every picture on the feed before it loads.
Let me explain: for every picture you post on Instagram, an AI object recognition feature would scan your photo and describe what is in the picture with the "alt text". For example, if you post a family portrait Christmas card, deep beneath the lines of code, your post would say, "this picture may contain: family, dog, portrait, Christmas tree, people." The more posts you post on Instagram, the more data Facebook would get, the more powerful their AI would become. This, is object recognition utilised in data collection.
Onto my opinion. This is definitely great for people with visual impairments, I would not take that away from them. However, I find it extremely creepy and disturbing with the way they are processing each and every photo we have uploaded on Instagram? The implication of this feature is that Instagram (and Facebook) has a database on what we post and what we like. If you liked 20 posts with the alt text = "corgi", Instagram would take that into account and show you more corgis in their pages. If you post a lot about food, they would show you more food, and more importantly, ads on food. Alt texts are like invisible hashtags, hashtags you involuntarily added so Instagram can collect data on you. I am not taking any legal responsibility about what I said in the above paragraph, I am just here to report what I think.
Most people probably do not know too much about this, but all of our Instagram feeds are ordained by the Instagram algorithm. (Spoiler Alert: it is not chronological.) When you have more than 20 posts on your feed, Instagram would decide for you that you must see the posts with "official verified accounts" (ie more likes and engagement) first, and posts from your friends the second. They try to use their crazy machine learning algorithms to decide whether you would be interested in these posts or not. Same goes to the "explore"page. However, this kind of algorithm does not work that well for most people. At least not for me. In my main account, where I would follow both friends and "official accounts" (magazines, memes, fan accounts), most of my feed is bombarded with posts that I honestly do not care about. As for the friend's stuff, unless they accumulate more than 150 likes per post, I would not be able to see it on the top of my feed. I would miss a lot of the "real" people and posts, and this kind of algorithmic marketing, to me, sounds very calculating. It shows how little Instagram actually cares about the social experience, and more importantly, how it has become as superficial as just a likes, comments, shares, and saves engagement platform.
This is a perfect segway to my next point: Instagram has now become a very money-centric platform. If you recall, Instagram has moved the notifications "heart" bar right next to the DMs sliding page of home, and the IG shop page right to its original position. This screams nothing but capitalism. WHO ON EARTH BUYS ON INSTAGRAM??? Social media platforms are curated for people to connect with friends and family (the notifications), not buying things (IG shop). See, I am fine with the ads, that's how most of y'all make money. But if you have to disrupt an everyday user's way of navigating on the platform, what message are you trying to convey? That you are money-hungry? That you are just trying to push people to buy stuff? Not only is this unreasonable, it further proves my point of how the Instagram ecosystem is just about what you buy, how you look, how many likes and followers do you have, etc.
Another perfect segue to my next point. I think it is no surprise that Instagram is what I think to be the most superficial and shallow platform available in the market. (Tiktok is probably number two in this category, but even though those TikTok "stars" are flavorless and untalented, I could appreciate some of the more informative content/ stan things there. Also, their algorithm work is superb, China scares me on another level.) Allow me to use the most evident example on Instagram: the Kardashian-Jenners. A cultural phenomenon indeed, the Kardashians is a family of plastics built based on loose morals and horrible upbringing. They have the power, the money, the freedom... but not a single brain cell or taste in sight. Maybe I am being too harsh on them, I appreciate how Kim is taking the barrister exam, and how Kendall is like the top-paid model with mhm-advanced-nepotism-cough-cough, but, my point about superficiality still stands. These celebrities do not promote a positive core message to young girls. Neither do the Instagram models, the Tiktok stars, or the YouTube vloggers. They are promoting a message of "appearance is everything, it does not matter how high your intellectual level is, as long as you are pretty, popular and rich, you are winning at life." (Also, all those LA so-called influencers went out to party in the middle of a pandemic, do not expect me to respect them when they do not have the basic human decency to wear a mask and social distance, when people are dying out there.)
This is not to say that I want to denounce "pretty privilege". The fact is, pretty privilege has always existed since the dawn of time, but we need to stop making plain, untalented people rich and famous. I wish we could go back to a time when lip-syncing to viral songs does not make you a million dollars, when actors, sportmen and artists are applauded for their talent, not just for their attractiveness. That would promote a healthier message, relaying that you cannot just rely on being pretty and rich to be successful, you have to prove to society that you are what you are worth. As for Instagram, it has now become this platform for people to show off their lifestyle (like KOLs on what to wear, what to eat, what to think as funny) and conventionally attractive people desperately chasing over likes and numbers. "Oh, likes and comments and shares does not matter, I could not care less," they'd say, but at the end of the day, even Instagram's algorithm has fostered itself into becoming this platform that only cares about numbers. It is truly shallow, mind-numbing and inane to me, and it infuriates me knowing that I am living in this modern-day status-obsessed vanity fair.
I guess this all comes down to what the "point" of social media is, to you. Instagram, the most popular social media platform right now, reflects our society in a digitised way, how we as a collective union deem certain values or aesthetics as important. I guess, right now, we all collectively decided that being white, American, pretty and talentless would get you real far in life. Personally, I prefer platforms where people would gather together by their common interests, where intellects and insights are exchanged through conversations, where our real-life identity is second to our thoughts and ideas...
I am not above Instagram, I am not on the moral highground of "I am too cool for Instagram". I regard myself a recovering drug addict of this platform, and I hope that one day everyone would realize how stupid this is and collectively decide to abandon this platform, like what we once did with Facebook. Once again, if you enjoy using Instagram and does not see any of my reasons to be justifications of hating on it, that is completely fine. As for me, I will stay deactivated on my main until I find a way to ease my disdain.