You can’t wait to go apple picking. It’s the beginning of autumn and the leaves have just begun to change colors. You spent time picking out your outfit and are looking forward to taking the perfect picture to post on Instagram. When you make it to the orchard you scout out the perfect place to take the perfect photo. You spend time curating the perfect shot. You edit carefully and press post.
If you’re like me, you will refresh your post repeatedly over the next few hours. You’ll be checking if your friend from middle school liked it, or whether your college friend commented on it. It makes you feel warm on the inside when you get yet another notification that someone chose to interact with your post. I probably spend too much time after I post refreshing, waiting anxiously for that next notification.
Instagram has been testing out a new feature in seven countries (not including the U.S.) where likes will be hidden on your Instagram feed. When you post a picture, you will be able to see how many people liked and commented on your post, but your Instagram followers will not. They would have to manually tally how many others reacted to your post instead. The goal of this new future is to reduce the hyper-competitive and anxiety driven world of social media posting.
But will introducing this feature actually help? I think it will not.
I am not someone who scrolls through Instagram looking at other people who have also posted apple picking pictures and see how their “like” count compares to my own. For one, they might have a completely different number of followers from me or perhaps they are very careful about who they let follow them.
What creates anxiety for me with social media is whether people that I care about choose to like and or comment on my post.
If one of my closest friends who is clearly on Instagram is liking everything else in their feed but not my post, that will make me anxious and upset. Instagram’s new feature will still allow me to see how many people like and comment on my post and therefore I don’t believe this will have any effect on my mental health or the mental health of many others in my generation.
If Instagram implements this feature worldwide, I do not believe that it will reduce the significant mental health challenges that our generation is currently facing.
You will still be able to see how many people like your post and you will still be aware of who is and who is not choosing to interact with the picture you spent so long curating. I understand that Instagram’s heart is in the right place, but I do not think that this feature will absolve us of the mental health difficulties that we are facing in the world of social media. I believe that we must look inward and contemplate why we are putting all of this pressure on ourselves in the first place to curate seemingly perfect lives when we all struggle with our demons and we all struggle with mental health in one form or another throughout the course of our lives.
It is my hope that we are all able to be introspective and truly become aware of our social media presence. What is your goal on Instagram? Are you trying to pretend and show others that your life is just so perfect? Are you trying to get more likes than your friend? Does it even mean anything if you do? This is something that many of us struggle with and I know in the year ahead I will focus on posting content that is meaningful to me.
Whether it gets a lot of likes or comments who knows, it is out of my control. What is in my control is what I choose to post.
I want my Instagram community to see pictures that are meaningful to me, content that is true to who I am deep down. I love cooking and when I post a picture of a new recipe tried out, I want to share it with my friends. When it’s the anniversary of my Dad’s death, I will post an old picture with him because I love and miss him every day. My life is not perfect, and neither is your life. Let’s stop pretending.
