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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 thing

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?
- TallGuyShort 9y ago
  Yeah it's ironic that a few years ago people made fun of the narcissistic side of social media: selfies, pictures of inane events throughout your day. That's actually what I DO want to see from old friends. I don't actually care to see most politics, memes, or order-of-operations problems that actual public school graduates can't seem to get. > And growing up with screens in their faces I hadn't thought about that. I definitely grew up with a screen in my face, but I also didn't have regular Internet access until I was an adult and already very sure of who I was and what I valued.
  - downer62 9y ago
    Meh, I grew up before computers, and let me tell you: There were plenty of fucked up things to sucker yourself into, before the internet, and when it comes to growing up, unhealthy decisions have always been part of the program. Just like the newfound diversity of musical tastes and choices, there are more recipes for bad decisions, but you can only listen to so many artists, and the law of probability points to the tendency that the ratio of good and bad decisions has expanded proportionally, and whatever the choices may be, the liklihood of outcome once chosen runs the same odds as ever. I could be wrong, but I suspect that's what's going on, as far as the big picture frames up.
  - kelnos 9y ago
    Yeah, I guess I more meant "grow up with the internet". Or, really, "grow up with services that goad you into oversharing a curated look into your life". I grew up with computers (well, first one around age 8), and hung out on local BBSes until the web came around, but even by then the worst social problems seemed to come from spending too much time chatting online and not enough time interacting with real people or playing outside. I think really the point is when people started growing up with Facebook. Given that FB has been around for 14 years now, there's a good chunk of people who are even in their 20s now who were introduced to FB as soon as they were old enough for their parents to let them have an account. Instagram came 6 years later, when some of these people were in their teens. A lot of social behavior gets hammered out in those years and growing up with FB/Instagram/etc. rather than being introduced to them post-adolescence might make difference.
namank 9y ago
I would refrain from attaching value judgments like "mature enough." As far as mental health conditions go, you just don't know what issues are going on within a person or indeed facing a population. The data only shows that you are not Instagram's power user. It's that simple.
- TallGuyShort 9y ago
  So you can call someone mentally ill based on phone usage, but not immature based on a problem apparently highly concentrated within a low age group? Your virtue has been successfully signaled.

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?

TallGuyShort 9y ago
Yeah it's ironic that a few years ago people made fun of the narcissistic side of social media: selfies, pictures of inane events throughout your day. That's actually what I DO want to see from old friends. I don't actually care to see most politics, memes, or order-of-operations problems that actual public school graduates can't seem to get. > And growing up with screens in their faces I hadn't thought about that. I definitely grew up with a screen in my face, but I also didn't have regular Internet access until I was an adult and already very sure of who I was and what I valued.
- downer62 9y ago
  Meh, I grew up before computers, and let me tell you: There were plenty of fucked up things to sucker yourself into, before the internet, and when it comes to growing up, unhealthy decisions have always been part of the program. Just like the newfound diversity of musical tastes and choices, there are more recipes for bad decisions, but you can only listen to so many artists, and the law of probability points to the tendency that the ratio of good and bad decisions has expanded proportionally, and whatever the choices may be, the liklihood of outcome once chosen runs the same odds as ever. I could be wrong, but I suspect that's what's going on, as far as the big picture frames up.
- kelnos 9y ago
  Yeah, I guess I more meant "grow up with the internet". Or, really, "grow up with services that goad you into oversharing a curated look into your life". I grew up with computers (well, first one around age 8), and hung out on local BBSes until the web came around, but even by then the worst social problems seemed to come from spending too much time chatting online and not enough time interacting with real people or playing outside. I think really the point is when people started growing up with Facebook. Given that FB has been around for 14 years now, there's a good chunk of people who are even in their 20s now who were introduced to FB as soon as they were old enough for their parents to let them have an account. Instagram came 6 years later, when some of these people were in their teens. A lot of social behavior gets hammered out in those years and growing up with FB/Instagram/etc. rather than being introduced to them post-adolescence might make difference.

namank 9y ago

I would refrain from attaching value judgments like "mature enough." As far as mental health conditions go, you just don't know what issues are going on within a person or indeed facing a population. The data only shows that you are not Instagram's power user. It's that simple.

TallGuyShort 9y ago
So you can call someone mentally ill based on phone usage, but not immature based on a problem apparently highly concentrated within a low age group? Your virtue has been successfully signaled.