11 ms·

Instagram ranked worst social network for young people's mental health

252 points by startupflix 9y ago

wlesieutre 9y ago
Interesting. Most of the people I know on it post less than on Facebook and there's a much higher ratio of other photos to selfies/screenshots compared to other social networks. I only post a couple times a month when I feel like I have a photo worth posting. As more people move over from mainline Facebook and Facebook adds more Facebooky features to Instagram, I expect it will get less useful for this. There's also not a lot of timeline control, so you do end up with situations where someone goes on a trip and suddenly you have 20 posts in a row from a single person at Disneyland. I suppose if you're using it as an all-purpose social network and trying to maintain a persona, the inability to post anything other than pictures applies a lot of pressure to always have exciting new pictures to post.
- startupflix 9y ago
  I guess they might be working on a post-status-as-a-picture feature.
  - wlesieutre 9y ago
    Wouldn't be surprised. Something akin to Facebook's "short status in large text on a colorful background". Bummer for me though, the lack of that kind of content is the single main reason I like Instagram. Making you come up with a photo worth sharing added enough friction to posting that people slowed down and only posted when they had something to post. As compared to Facebook where you can just be constantly status updating and sharing links, etc. The one thing that I want it to do is take the big bursts of activity from a single user and collapse them into 1-2 posts and then "Expand 18 more posts from Bob...", but I'm not holding my breath. More likely they'll try for a fancy machine learning solution that's less predictable from a user perspective, but probably sells more ads because I'm scrolling through it trying to find where it put something.
  - RandallBrown 9y ago
    That's what Instagram Stories are.
    - wlesieutre 9y ago
      Not nearly intrusive enough! Give it a year and stories will also show up in your timeline.
      - mi100hael 9y ago
        They already do show you a static preview overlayed with the user's round profile photo after you scroll down past 4 or 5 photos on your timeline
        NDT 9y ago
        And they have a feature called Highlights I believe which allow you to pin stories to your profile, so they're viewable forever
- startupflix 9y ago
  Also, don't forget about the 'race' to get more and more likes on the post.
  - wlesieutre 9y ago
    Oh right, that and comment threads. I turned off notifications and honestly forgot it has all that.
    - startupflix 9y ago
      Also the tags.
- DarkTree 9y ago
  People post fewer photos, but that shouldn't be confused with having less of an influence on social culture. Now each post carries much more weight, and therefor is more heavily curated to show that person's perfect life. It goes further than that though. I know people who wait for a specific hour on Sunday to post their weekly photo because they know that most people check their instagram then and therefor will get them the most likes. In fact people are going on more adventures and trying more restaurants, which we can argue is a net positive, but it really taints the experience and makes it hard for me to support when so much of the motivation for doing so revolves around taking that perfect picture to share on instagram. I try not to be a counter-culture cynical critic, but dang.
GoneToThailand 9y ago
Instagram got me laid countless times and I am 14 years old.
amirmc 9y ago
> "Respondents were asked to score how each of the social media platforms they use impact upon issues such as anxiety, loneliness and community building. The site with the most positive rating was YouTube, followed by Twitter. Facebook and Snapchat came third and fourth respectively." YouTube had the most positive rating!? I'm honestly not sure what to make of this. The experience of 14-24 year olds must be vastly different to the comments etc I've seen there.
- InclinedPlane 9y ago
  YouTube isn't some tiny niche, it's a huge sprawling expanse of content. You may be shocked to learn that what others view on youtube is completely different from what you watch there, and that leads to different experiences. Not just in the details, but in character as well.
- blattimwind 9y ago
  Don't look at comments.
- addicted 9y ago
  Most people probably don’t interact with the comments. Most probably just watch the videos, ignore the comments, or glance at the comments and never venture back due to the toxicity of it all. Twitter is like taking YouTube comments and making them the content. Instagram/Snapchat is the same, except now the comments are pictures with a whole lot of body shaming thrown in.
  - warent 9y ago
    > "Twitter is like taking YouTube comments and making them the content" This is by far the best, most succinct description of Twitter I've ever heard. Love it. Keeping this one and requoting it forever, thank you
  - DanielleMolloy 9y ago
    > Twitter is like taking YouTube comments and making them the content. Much of it, yes. But 1) tailor your Twitter stream to your (professional) interests, 2) ignore any trending news, 3) unfollow people who tweet random stuff or have too much Trump (or any current politics) in their mix and it will provide useful. I follow mostly computational neuroscience / machine learning scientists, and have heard much about recent research, summary articles or conferences first on Twitter. On an evening just two weeks ago I glanced at my list and saw a poster about one of the most intriguing research findings I've yet seen. Without Twitter I would have had to attend the conference or waited for the paper. Science Twitter is active and growing, and as scientists are busy people for many it has become a popular and low-effort announcement platform for new work (much better than university blogs or press releases and such). I see much more toxicity glancing on any video's YouTube comments than on my Twitter stream.
martin_bech 9y ago
Anecdotal, but there is a documentary right now on danish television, on 4 young girls stressing about, having to be perfect, and bad mental health/self esteem.. and it looks a lot like most of them have an instagram addiction. One chooses places to eat etc. on what would look best on instagram. One aimmessly browsers pretty girls, to see how should look herself.
- startupflix 9y ago
  Horrible.
- alienreborn 9y ago
  Relevant movie that explores the psyche behind both `consumer` and `producer` on Instagram: Ingrid Goes West
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- rainieri 9y ago
  How's this any different from mindlessly listening to generic pop music and reading teen magazines?
  - Skunkleton 9y ago
    Different things can be bad for the same reason.
  - HarryHirsch 9y ago
    Heh. The teenie magazines occasionally have a conscience where you least expect it. This fellow here - https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Goldstein_(Psychotherapeut) https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Goldstein_(Psychotherap... - he wrote for the best-known German youth magazine, and he was good. Instagram and Facebook, OTOH, they sell clicks and outrage, because outrage sells.
  - nosuchthing 9y ago
    The illusion of authenticity, the pervasiveness and ubiquitous of mobile phone app usage, and participation in the illusion of the spectacle and camouflaged theatrics of a contrived reality. Teens can understand magazines have a known aspect of theatrics, whereas the assumption is that instagram is reality and like a Pavlovian dog you must present your life in such a way to gather bonus points from other internet users.
jatins 9y ago
I remember when Insta was "newer", people used to comment on how much nicer it made them feel compared to Facebook. I also felt that same. But I guess beyond a point, all social networks turn into bit of a rat-race, which also reminds me of college.
- startupflix 9y ago
  Engineering :p
ChicagoDave 9y ago
I deleted it a month ago. Complete useless waste of time. It's filled with purely narcissistic photos. It can't possibly be healthy for anyone.
- justinzollars 9y ago
  I also deleted it! I'm sick of Zucks garbage business model.
- criddell 9y ago
  Were you also posting narcissistic photos?
  - justinzollars 9y ago
    I don't see what was wrong with his opinion. Why make it personal?
    - criddell 9y ago
      I didn't make it personal, he (or she) did when they said "I deleted it a month ago". The given reason was stated fairly ambiguously. If that person doesn't want to see the narcissistic photos of others, they can simply unfollow those that post that kind of stuff. If, on the other hand, they find themselves indulging in narcissistic displays, well that makes a little more sense for why you would quit for reasons of health.
- TuringNYC 9y ago
  I'm assuming this is heavily biased by your curation. I follow graffiti artists, calligraphy artists, and landscape photographers. My Instagram feed is filled with new artwork that inspires me daily, it is almost like visiting a museum everyday.
  - justinzollars 9y ago
    you are selling this pretty hard.
misterbowfinger 9y ago
Link to report cited in the article: https://www.rsph.org.uk/uploads/assets/uploaded/62be270a-a55f-4719-ad668c2ec7a74c2a.pdf https://www.rsph.org.uk/uploads/assets/uploaded/62be270a-a55...
danielblazevski 9y ago
Whatever is the current most popular form of social media will always be the worst for people's mental health. Like fb ranks lower on how much stress it induces since "kids these days" simply don't use it much.
s3r3nity 9y ago
After reviewing the report and the associated studies, there are no indicators that this is a causal relationship - just correlations. My immediate reaction is "why are we ruling out the possibility that they are on Instagram / Fb / (insert network of choice) because they do not have healthy EQ (emotional intelligence as a proxy for "mental health" here?)" I don't have skin in this fight, but I am extremely skeptical of "correlation over causation" with specious conclusions that justify certain opinions that are popular here on HN.
- learnstats2 9y ago
  Statistics rarely gives causal indicators (and arguably it would always be impossible to distinguish cause and effect in this case). So, this is an unhelpful criticism. Is there a correlation? Yes. Is there a causation? We can't know for sure, but we also can't rule it out and it is certainly worth considering and reporting on in lay terms.
  - jm_l 9y ago
    Couldn't you settle this by controlling for initial mental health in two groups, having one group start using Instagram, and tracking any changes? If your point is that it would take work to separate correlation and causation then yes, agreed, but I don't see why you would think we can't know for sure.
    - extra88 9y ago
      That would probably be considered unethical because the expected change would cause harm. Instead, perhaps you could have group A stop using Instagram and group B continue using Instagram then compare. It would be important to look deeper to see if there are differences within group A between those who and did not replace using Instagram with another social platform.
    - learnstats2 9y ago
      In addition to the other concern, you don't have a good control here because you intend to select from people who don't (or do) currently use Instagram - but this is already a self-selecting group.
jklinger410 9y ago
Or: Instagram ranked social network most likely to be frequented by people with poor mental health.
olliej 9y ago
I can believe this - even though as other people mention the study seems poorly designed. That said I literally just use Instagram for dogs and nothing else. So it’s just a source of joy :)
- justboxing 9y ago
  > I literally just use Instagram for dogs What do you mean? Can you elaborate? ( Not Trolling) Do you use it to see Dog pics & Videos? or Dog owner stuff? I use IG exclusively for watching cat videos, and boxing news.
  - NDT 9y ago
    S/he probably means seeing dog pictures/videos. Or if he owns a dog, operating a dog account (god, that sounds weird typing it out).
  - olliej 9y ago
    As NDT said I use it for watching dog pictures (and inflicting my terrible dog photography upon the internet :D )
ryanmarsh 9y ago
survey found the photo-sharing app negatively impacted on people's body image, sleep and fear of missing out That’s funny because I (not young) get a bit of joy from Instagram. The FOMO makes me travel and do things I wouldn’t otherwise. My wife encouraged me to start capturing the beautiful things I see and now I go back to my profile[0] and relive some amazing and beautiful moments. The ripped guys (and gals) on there remind me to hit the gym. Instead I think it’s all about perspective. My wife says “comparison is the thief of joy”. I don’t compare myself to what I find on IG. I use to to inspire me as to what’s possible. Facebook and Twitter, by contrast, are full of mean people saying mean things. That makes me feel yuck inside. So I try to avoid both. 0: https://www.instagram.com/ryan_marsh/ https://www.instagram.com/ryan_marsh/
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
TallGuyShort 9y ago
I'm curious to know what this looks like for slightly older people. I can see the down side to Instagram: the way it can amplify an obsession with the way things appear from curated snapshots of someone else's seemingly perfect life. And it definitely has less nuanced communication of certain types of ideas - it's not a place to discuss the merits of social policy. But as someone who is slightly older than this 14-24 generation, who finds enriching food-for-thought elsewhere and who isn't obsessed with how other people's lives look, I find Instagram to be the most uplifting of the major networks. It's often more light-hearted than Facebook, and most accounts I follow are purely posting pictures of new products in fields that interest me, pictures of friends doing fun things with their kids, etc. There's much less political flaming, dumb memes, etc. than I unavoidably see elsewhere. I deleted Facebook and LinkedIn from my phone because Facebook just made me feel angry and LinkedIn is just spam and self-congratulation. Instagram is the only major social network still on my phone. For people who are mature enough to self-regulate and not get addicted to scrolling up and updating their feed, and for people who can avoid an unhealthy level of envying how other's lives appear to be, it seems like a pretty good way to stay up to date with people and hobbies.
- kelnos 9y ago
  Couldn't agree more. I tend to only follow my friends on Instagram (and not celebrities and other special-interest accounts), and it makes me happy to see them doing things that make them happy. Posts that have to do with politically charged or other negative issues are few and far between. Facebook is nearly the opposite of this for me. It really baffles me how so many people don't realize that Instagram generally will only show the "ups" in a person's life, and often not the "downs", and actually allow that to make them feel bad about their own lives. I guess at the end of the day I communicate via other channels with a lot of the people I follow, so I know that their life isn't as rosy as their Instagram feed alone might make it seem (though even if I didn't, that "insight" seems like a no-brainer). Perhaps a lot of people in the younger generation use things like Instagram as a primary means of catching up on what's going on in their friends' lives? And growing up with screens in their faces has changed how they react to things in some really bad ways?
  - 9y ago
thephyber 9y ago
Timestamped "19 MAY 2017" Please change the title to reflect this.
NDT 9y ago
I really wonder what the user experience would be like if only the creator of the post could see the "likes" on Instagram and Facebook. Similar to Snapchat, I think it would alleviate some of this anxiety and need for validation if we didn't see how much attention our friends get on social media.
- mLuby 9y ago
  Good idea! Sounds easy enough to test with a browser extension. :)
  - NDT 9y ago
    It's what I'm planning on doing!
- baud147258 9y ago
  Like how it's done with the comment upvotes on HN?
  - NDT 9y ago
    Exactly.
Bucephalus355 9y ago
FYI suicide rates for 10-14 years old have increased 250%+ since 2007. I know of no other way to more accurately measure the decline and sickness of an age than the number of children that want to willingly kill themselves. Source is the CDC Mortality Statistics and also Dr. Jean Twenge out of San Diego.
Arqu 9y ago
I think this goes for all the mainstream social networks. They are just echo chambers where people feed their ego on the ego of others. In the past 4 years I've been cutting down on all this crap, not because I couldn't handle it, but because it provides 0 value to me and only consumes time. Still got all the accounts but dont use them. Cut out snapchat, twitter, facebook, instagram and like 20 news portals. Currently only look at HN to keep up to date and sometimes open Reddit. No games no nothing on the phone. Entertainment is at home or out with friends.

252 points by startupflix 9y ago

Interesting. Most of the people I know on it post less than on Facebook and there's a much higher ratio of other photos to selfies/screenshots compared to other social networks. I only post a couple times a month when I feel like I have a photo worth posting. As more people move over from mainline Facebook and Facebook adds more Facebooky features to Instagram, I expect it will get less useful for this. There's also not a lot of timeline control, so you do end up with situations where someone goes on a trip and suddenly you have 20 posts in a row from a single person at Disneyland. I suppose if you're using it as an all-purpose social network and trying to maintain a persona, the inability to post anything other than pictures applies a lot of pressure to always have exciting new pictures to post.

startupflix 9y ago
I guess they might be working on a post-status-as-a-picture feature.
- wlesieutre 9y ago
  Wouldn't be surprised. Something akin to Facebook's "short status in large text on a colorful background". Bummer for me though, the lack of that kind of content is the single main reason I like Instagram. Making you come up with a photo worth sharing added enough friction to posting that people slowed down and only posted when they had something to post. As compared to Facebook where you can just be constantly status updating and sharing links, etc. The one thing that I want it to do is take the big bursts of activity from a single user and collapse them into 1-2 posts and then "Expand 18 more posts from Bob...", but I'm not holding my breath. More likely they'll try for a fancy machine learning solution that's less predictable from a user perspective, but probably sells more ads because I'm scrolling through it trying to find where it put something.
- RandallBrown 9y ago
  That's what Instagram Stories are.
  - wlesieutre 9y ago
    Not nearly intrusive enough! Give it a year and stories will also show up in your timeline.
    - mi100hael 9y ago
      They already do show you a static preview overlayed with the user's round profile photo after you scroll down past 4 or 5 photos on your timeline
      - NDT 9y ago
        And they have a feature called Highlights I believe which allow you to pin stories to your profile, so they're viewable forever
startupflix 9y ago
Also, don't forget about the 'race' to get more and more likes on the post.
- wlesieutre 9y ago
  Oh right, that and comment threads. I turned off notifications and honestly forgot it has all that.
  - startupflix 9y ago
    Also the tags.
DarkTree 9y ago
People post fewer photos, but that shouldn't be confused with having less of an influence on social culture. Now each post carries much more weight, and therefor is more heavily curated to show that person's perfect life. It goes further than that though. I know people who wait for a specific hour on Sunday to post their weekly photo because they know that most people check their instagram then and therefor will get them the most likes. In fact people are going on more adventures and trying more restaurants, which we can argue is a net positive, but it really taints the experience and makes it hard for me to support when so much of the motivation for doing so revolves around taking that perfect picture to share on instagram. I try not to be a counter-culture cynical critic, but dang.

GoneToThailand 9y ago

Instagram got me laid countless times and I am 14 years old.

amirmc 9y ago

> "Respondents were asked to score how each of the social media platforms they use impact upon issues such as anxiety, loneliness and community building. The site with the most positive rating was YouTube, followed by Twitter. Facebook and Snapchat came third and fourth respectively." YouTube had the most positive rating!? I'm honestly not sure what to make of this. The experience of 14-24 year olds must be vastly different to the comments etc I've seen there.

InclinedPlane 9y ago
YouTube isn't some tiny niche, it's a huge sprawling expanse of content. You may be shocked to learn that what others view on youtube is completely different from what you watch there, and that leads to different experiences. Not just in the details, but in character as well.
blattimwind 9y ago
Don't look at comments.
addicted 9y ago
Most people probably don’t interact with the comments. Most probably just watch the videos, ignore the comments, or glance at the comments and never venture back due to the toxicity of it all. Twitter is like taking YouTube comments and making them the content. Instagram/Snapchat is the same, except now the comments are pictures with a whole lot of body shaming thrown in.
- warent 9y ago
  > "Twitter is like taking YouTube comments and making them the content" This is by far the best, most succinct description of Twitter I've ever heard. Love it. Keeping this one and requoting it forever, thank you
- DanielleMolloy 9y ago
  > Twitter is like taking YouTube comments and making them the content. Much of it, yes. But 1) tailor your Twitter stream to your (professional) interests, 2) ignore any trending news, 3) unfollow people who tweet random stuff or have too much Trump (or any current politics) in their mix and it will provide useful. I follow mostly computational neuroscience / machine learning scientists, and have heard much about recent research, summary articles or conferences first on Twitter. On an evening just two weeks ago I glanced at my list and saw a poster about one of the most intriguing research findings I've yet seen. Without Twitter I would have had to attend the conference or waited for the paper. Science Twitter is active and growing, and as scientists are busy people for many it has become a popular and low-effort announcement platform for new work (much better than university blogs or press releases and such). I see much more toxicity glancing on any video's YouTube comments than on my Twitter stream.

martin_bech 9y ago

Anecdotal, but there is a documentary right now on danish television, on 4 young girls stressing about, having to be perfect, and bad mental health/self esteem.. and it looks a lot like most of them have an instagram addiction. One chooses places to eat etc. on what would look best on instagram. One aimmessly browsers pretty girls, to see how should look herself.

startupflix 9y ago
Horrible.
alienreborn 9y ago
Relevant movie that explores the psyche behind both `consumer` and `producer` on Instagram: Ingrid Goes West
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
rainieri 9y ago
How's this any different from mindlessly listening to generic pop music and reading teen magazines?
- Skunkleton 9y ago
  Different things can be bad for the same reason.
- HarryHirsch 9y ago
  Heh. The teenie magazines occasionally have a conscience where you least expect it. This fellow here - https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Goldstein_(Psychotherapeut) https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Goldstein_(Psychotherap... - he wrote for the best-known German youth magazine, and he was good. Instagram and Facebook, OTOH, they sell clicks and outrage, because outrage sells.
- nosuchthing 9y ago
  The illusion of authenticity, the pervasiveness and ubiquitous of mobile phone app usage, and participation in the illusion of the spectacle and camouflaged theatrics of a contrived reality. Teens can understand magazines have a known aspect of theatrics, whereas the assumption is that instagram is reality and like a Pavlovian dog you must present your life in such a way to gather bonus points from other internet users.

jatins 9y ago

I remember when Insta was "newer", people used to comment on how much nicer it made them feel compared to Facebook. I also felt that same. But I guess beyond a point, all social networks turn into bit of a rat-race, which also reminds me of college.

startupflix 9y ago
Engineering :p

ChicagoDave 9y ago

I deleted it a month ago. Complete useless waste of time. It's filled with purely narcissistic photos. It can't possibly be healthy for anyone.

justinzollars 9y ago
I also deleted it! I'm sick of Zucks garbage business model.
criddell 9y ago
Were you also posting narcissistic photos?
- justinzollars 9y ago
  I don't see what was wrong with his opinion. Why make it personal?
  - criddell 9y ago
    I didn't make it personal, he (or she) did when they said "I deleted it a month ago". The given reason was stated fairly ambiguously. If that person doesn't want to see the narcissistic photos of others, they can simply unfollow those that post that kind of stuff. If, on the other hand, they find themselves indulging in narcissistic displays, well that makes a little more sense for why you would quit for reasons of health.
TuringNYC 9y ago
I'm assuming this is heavily biased by your curation. I follow graffiti artists, calligraphy artists, and landscape photographers. My Instagram feed is filled with new artwork that inspires me daily, it is almost like visiting a museum everyday.
- justinzollars 9y ago
  you are selling this pretty hard.

misterbowfinger 9y ago

Link to report cited in the article: https://www.rsph.org.uk/uploads/assets/uploaded/62be270a-a55f-4719-ad668c2ec7a74c2a.pdf https://www.rsph.org.uk/uploads/assets/uploaded/62be270a-a55...

danielblazevski 9y ago

Whatever is the current most popular form of social media will always be the worst for people's mental health. Like fb ranks lower on how much stress it induces since "kids these days" simply don't use it much.

s3r3nity 9y ago

After reviewing the report and the associated studies, there are no indicators that this is a causal relationship - just correlations. My immediate reaction is "why are we ruling out the possibility that they are on Instagram / Fb / (insert network of choice) because they do not have healthy EQ (emotional intelligence as a proxy for "mental health" here?)" I don't have skin in this fight, but I am extremely skeptical of "correlation over causation" with specious conclusions that justify certain opinions that are popular here on HN.

learnstats2 9y ago
Statistics rarely gives causal indicators (and arguably it would always be impossible to distinguish cause and effect in this case). So, this is an unhelpful criticism. Is there a correlation? Yes. Is there a causation? We can't know for sure, but we also can't rule it out and it is certainly worth considering and reporting on in lay terms.
- jm_l 9y ago
  Couldn't you settle this by controlling for initial mental health in two groups, having one group start using Instagram, and tracking any changes? If your point is that it would take work to separate correlation and causation then yes, agreed, but I don't see why you would think we can't know for sure.
  - extra88 9y ago
    That would probably be considered unethical because the expected change would cause harm. Instead, perhaps you could have group A stop using Instagram and group B continue using Instagram then compare. It would be important to look deeper to see if there are differences within group A between those who and did not replace using Instagram with another social platform.
  - learnstats2 9y ago
    In addition to the other concern, you don't have a good control here because you intend to select from people who don't (or do) currently use Instagram - but this is already a self-selecting group.

jklinger410 9y ago

Or: Instagram ranked social network most likely to be frequented by people with poor mental health.

olliej 9y ago

I can believe this - even though as other people mention the study seems poorly designed. That said I literally just use Instagram for dogs and nothing else. So it’s just a source of joy :)

justboxing 9y ago
> I literally just use Instagram for dogs What do you mean? Can you elaborate? ( Not Trolling) Do you use it to see Dog pics & Videos? or Dog owner stuff? I use IG exclusively for watching cat videos, and boxing news.
- NDT 9y ago
  S/he probably means seeing dog pictures/videos. Or if he owns a dog, operating a dog account (god, that sounds weird typing it out).
- olliej 9y ago
  As NDT said I use it for watching dog pictures (and inflicting my terrible dog photography upon the internet :D )

ryanmarsh 9y ago

survey found the photo-sharing app negatively impacted on people's body image, sleep and fear of missing out That’s funny because I (not young) get a bit of joy from Instagram. The FOMO makes me travel and do things I wouldn’t otherwise. My wife encouraged me to start capturing the beautiful things I see and now I go back to my profile[0] and relive some amazing and beautiful moments. The ripped guys (and gals) on there remind me to hit the gym. Instead I think it’s all about perspective. My wife says “comparison is the thief of joy”. I don’t compare myself to what I find on IG. I use to to inspire me as to what’s possible. Facebook and Twitter, by contrast, are full of mean people saying mean things. That makes me feel yuck inside. So I try to avoid both. 0: https://www.instagram.com/ryan_marsh/ https://www.instagram.com/ryan_marsh/

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

TallGuyShort 9y ago

I'm curious to know what this looks like for slightly older people. I can see the down side to Instagram: the way it can amplify an obsession with the way things appear from curated snapshots of someone else's seemingly perfect life. And it definitely has less nuanced communication of certain types of ideas - it's not a place to discuss the merits of social policy. But as someone who is slightly older than this 14-24 generation, who finds enriching food-for-thought elsewhere and who isn't obsessed with how other people's lives look, I find Instagram to be the most uplifting of the major networks. It's often more light-hearted than Facebook, and most accounts I follow are purely posting pictures of new products in fields that interest me, pictures of friends doing fun things with their kids, etc. There's much less political flaming, dumb memes, etc. than I unavoidably see elsewhere. I deleted Facebook and LinkedIn from my phone because Facebook just made me feel angry and LinkedIn is just spam and self-congratulation. Instagram is the only major social network still on my phone. For people who are mature enough to self-regulate and not get addicted to scrolling up and updating their feed, and for people who can avoid an unhealthy level of envying how other's lives appear to be, it seems like a pretty good way to stay up to date with people and hobbies.

kelnos 9y ago
Couldn't agree more. I tend to only follow my friends on Instagram (and not celebrities and other special-interest accounts), and it makes me happy to see them doing things that make them happy. Posts that have to do with politically charged or other negative issues are few and far between. Facebook is nearly the opposite of this for me. It really baffles me how so many people don't realize that Instagram generally will only show the "ups" in a person's life, and often not the "downs", and actually allow that to make them feel bad about their own lives. I guess at the end of the day I communicate via other channels with a lot of the people I follow, so I know that their life isn't as rosy as their Instagram feed alone might make it seem (though even if I didn't, that "insight" seems like a no-brainer). Perhaps a lot of people in the younger generation use things like Instagram as a primary means of catching up on what's going on in their friends' lives? And growing up with screens in their faces has changed how they react to things in some really bad ways?
- 9y ago

thephyber 9y ago

Timestamped "19 MAY 2017" Please change the title to reflect this.

NDT 9y ago

I really wonder what the user experience would be like if only the creator of the post could see the "likes" on Instagram and Facebook. Similar to Snapchat, I think it would alleviate some of this anxiety and need for validation if we didn't see how much attention our friends get on social media.

mLuby 9y ago
Good idea! Sounds easy enough to test with a browser extension. :)
- NDT 9y ago
  It's what I'm planning on doing!
baud147258 9y ago
Like how it's done with the comment upvotes on HN?
- NDT 9y ago
  Exactly.

Bucephalus355 9y ago

FYI suicide rates for 10-14 years old have increased 250%+ since 2007. I know of no other way to more accurately measure the decline and sickness of an age than the number of children that want to willingly kill themselves. Source is the CDC Mortality Statistics and also Dr. Jean Twenge out of San Diego.

Arqu 9y ago

I think this goes for all the mainstream social networks. They are just echo chambers where people feed their ego on the ego of others. In the past 4 years I've been cutting down on all this crap, not because I couldn't handle it, but because it provides 0 value to me and only consumes time. Still got all the accounts but dont use them. Cut out snapchat, twitter, facebook, instagram and like 20 news portals. Currently only look at HN to keep up to date and sometimes open Reddit. No games no nothing on the phone. Entertainment is at home or out with friends.