Growing up, social media was just becoming a new, fun genre of apps to use. Smartphones and digital technology like iPod Touches and iPads were starting to become popular gifts for many young adults and children. Some parents had enough knowledge to put online restrictions on their children… but for most, this was an entirely new frontier. Instagram, in particular, was just a fun place to post random pictures.
Now, in 2024, we are aware of the detrimental impacts of social media (such as Instagram) on mental health, especially for youth. Apps that started out as simple, unintuitive places to casually post updates or pictures evolved faster than we were able to realize the effects it has on users’ mental well-being. I was a pre-teen and teenager using Instagram before this research became widely known, and the “like culture” and algorithms certainly had impacts on my mental health and those around me growing up.
Art by Shruti Talekar, https://pittnews.com/
I got my first iPod touch in 2013 when I was in fourth grade, as a Christmas gift to play games on. Instagram had recently been bought by Facebook, but it was still very much seen as a harmless app to post pictures on. Pictures of what my fellow 10-year-old friends were eating for lunch that day, the homework they were struggling with, and their pets were usually the only things my peers and I would see or interact with. Although the app has evolved, one thing never changed: the numbers.
Even before the algorithms, advertisements, messaging, stories, reels, or comment threads, everyone was always able to see how “popular” another user was by the number of followers they had and the number of likes on their posts. At the start, this was subconscious: I always was looking for people from school to follow in hopes they’d follow me and like my pictures. I used Instagram the same as everyone else- posting silly pictures with blindingly bad filters- but there was always a looming worry about how many people liked my pictures in comparison to others. As a young girl, it felt like the more likes I had, the more friends I had; even though I was never really concerned about popularity in school!
Slowly, over time, this would start to have an impact on my mental health and many of my peers around me. Every change to the app has created the social media landscape that we know today, but we were experiencing it in real-time without realizing its full effect. Over the next few years, social media became significantly more popular and became synonymous with social status. Everyone in school had social media, and Instagram was an essential part of connecting with classmates. This also meant that everyone I knew could see how many people liked my pictures and how many followers I had.
One of the biggest impacts to this Instagram culture was in the midst of middle school, in 2016, when Instagram made a huge change to its functionality: posts would no longer be displayed in chronological order but by an algorithm of what the app thinks the user would like to see most.
In a social context, this meant that if you weren’t deemed “popular” enough by the algorithm, nobody would even see your post. Many girls I knew (and me included) would plan out what to post, how to post it, and exactly what time it needed to be posted for people to see it. Here’s the 2016 middle school guide to posting on Instagram:
● Make sure the post has people in it. Pictures of nature/objects/etc. would rarely be seen and it would limit your algorithmic reach.
● If you tag people, make sure they know you’re posting. If they don’t like or comment on your post, the algorithm will pick up on the fact that even the people in the picture do not like it.
● If you follow a lot of people before you post, and they follow you back, your post will show up at the top of their feed. It is new to their algorithm, so Instagram will want to see if they interact with you, and usually, you’ll get more likes.
● Always add a caption, or it will not get pushed on users’ feeds.
● NEVER post during school hours! Nobody will see it, and the algorithm will treat it like you never even posted it.
As crazy as it seems looking back, this is what so many young girls did to feel valued. I never experienced anyone using each other’s like counts as an insult, but this is where I internally felt the approval and acceptance of my peers. I would rack up hundreds of likes, and it would matter to me… but do I even know 400 people? Does it matter if someone I wouldn’t recognize in public liked my picture?
The anxiety of planning out a post and hoping Instagram would promote it and people would see it was the “normal” for me throughout my early teenage years. It impacted my mental health and my self-esteem at times, as social spheres amongst young girls can be brutal. Instagram not only allowed but encouraged me to compare myself to my peers and “compete” for the most likes, the most followers, and the most attention. I would also see it affecting my close friends; many teenage girls suffer from depression, body dysmorphia, and eating disorders as a result of toxic social media culture and constant comparisons to others.
All of these effects of social media on mental health are extremely important to be aware of and educate everyone on. Instagram is a company, whose goal is to keep people posting and interacting with the app, so it will continue to make changes to promote “popularity” and continue a culture of comparison.
Now, having grown up and matured, I am significantly more aware of the impacts of social media, Instagram specifically, on my mental health. Ever since Instagram introduced the ability to hide the like count on a post, I have taken advantage of it.
Hiding like counts on Instagram can now easily be done directly from the post.
Of course, I can see the count on my own post, but that does not matter to me. Many people disable the like counts on their posts now, which will ultimately reduce the ability for people to compare themselves to others by such a meaningless metric whether they realize it or not. I was so young when I first started using Instagram that it became a habit before I even realized how it was impacting my mental health, and I hope that something even as small as hiding the number will help in the future.
Faith Lovell
I have never put too much thought into how to maximize my likes on Instagram but I have heard these guidelines from people I'm close with and always felt sad after hearing them because of how much pressure was on them to conform to social standards
This is SO relatable, especially the beginning of how insta posts change over time. Im pretty sure my first Insta account was super random and now I post on instagram maybe once every few months because the norm has become so specific. Also I really agree with the affect of the number of followers or likes you have. I remember having less followers or likes on my instagram in middle school because I was really shy and I was embarrassed about it.
The 'Hidden Likes' feature was a game changer. I agree that it helped so much to not see how many of my peers or friends were getting in posts, especially when a bunch of friends and I would post from the same event. Something that I find relevant, that as you mentioned, was how the number of followers often still matters and now there is verification from the Insta company adds another layer of "worthy" to your social media presence. Originally, that feature was introduce to help people of higher status to be found in the sea of fakes and fan accounts, but now it often feels like another level of fame or glory to be "noticed" by the company.…
The numbers game behind social media is EXACTLY why I keep my social media presence to a minimum. I'm only on Facebook and Discord, both of which I only use for communication and to keep in touch with people. I found that every time I would try out a new social media platform, I would become weirdly obsessed with follower counts and it was so out of character for me that I felt the need to get rid of those accounts entirely. All of that was within the passed 2 years so it was interesting seeing the perspective of someone that experienced that numbers game from a young age.