With the rapid development of the technology industry, everything is more inclined to mobile-based. The rise of social media has turned the human lifestyle and gradually replaced the position of traditional media. Nowadays people are obsessed with mobile photography, that’s one of the reasons why Instagram gains their interest. Like other social media platforms else, Instagram users are able to interact with other users by “follow” them or “being followed” by others, hitting a red heart button as giving like and tagging people in a photo or video. Instagram launched the stories feature in August 2016, precipitating the growth and usage of its users. “Instagram is growing in users, use, and prominence.” From related statistics stated Instagram has more than 1 billion monthly active users now (Dhillon, 2018). Instagram is good for social networks because it provides a community to the user for communication and interaction with others. However, it hides some dark side to young people and influencers because they strive for unrealistic expectations that lead to mental health issues. Therefore, Instagram is taking big effort into solving the cyberbullying problem from improving their UX design and new features in its app for creating a correct and positive platform.
How Instagram Changes Teenagers Nowadays
According to the statistics done by Newberry, 63% of Instagram users log in at least once per day and 42% check multiple times per day (Newberry, 2019). Instagram has become a social networking app that encourages users to take photos, add a filter, write a caption, and post. Instagram has become popular among teenagers because it provides a platform for them to share their lives with friends and connect to the community. Teenagers use Instagram as a photo-journaling to document their moments. According to the study shows that about 56% of Instagram users said they feel more connected while using Instagram and have a sense of community (Roesler, n.d.). Teenagers get into Instagram because they really intend to discover visual-based content, and everything can be captured and recorded in the immediate moment. Research also shows that most Instagram users are from 18–24-year-old (Chen, 2020). This statistics draws a situation that Instagram has the ability to connect teenagers and they prefer to use it to connect with like-minded communities.
A report from the Royal Society for Public Health mentioned that Instagram has become the most harmful social media platform that affected teenagers’ mental health and causes illnesses like depression or anxiety (Rsph.org.uk, 2017). Here’s a common phenomenon that occurs among teenagers. Teenagers nowadays mostly have two Instagram account, the first usually will be the main account and it is public to everyone. Moreover, that is a second private account also as “finstagram” which meaning fake Instagram. They use “finstagram” as a spam account to post the rarer and less edited photos to their close friends (Orlando, 2018). The phenomenon starts to popular since teenagers are more conscious about their image, they keep posting perfect photos on their public account to get likes and build their followers. However, there is only a part of them, so they create a private account to jump out from the picture-perfect and show the real-me personality. Various judgments were passed on this “finstagram” because it relies on how teenagers use it.
In addition, there’s another worrying problem that happens in teenagers. A recent survey said most mental health and levels of insecurity issues have come from Instagram, including FOMO and bullying. FOMO is an acronym of “fear of missing out”, people use it when they feel forgotten by someone or being isolated or excluded on Instagram stories or posts. Instagram encourages users to share their life, however, users usually only share the best part of their life. While users lose the interests of their followers, they might feel FOMO and start to anxiety. In addition, most of the FOMO is the figment of human imagination which mean human have invented the psychological torture to themselves (Manson, n.d.). The situation of FOMO can even bring impact to our daily life. Due to the mobile-first lifestyle, people tend to record and document everything that they are involved in. While they do not have the phone to capture, they will feel antsy and anxious in day to day life (Djisseglo, 2019).
The Dark Side Behind Social Influencer That We Don’t Know
The Influencer Marketing research report from Business Insider Intelligence mentioned that about 79% of brands predominantly take Instagram for influencer campaigns. This makes Instagram really stand out among social media platforms. Business Insider Intelligence estimates that the influencer marketing industry will be worth up to $15 billion by 2022 according to Mediakix data (Schomer, 2019). Consumers were influenced by celebrity endorsement while making purchase decisions in the past. By attaching the fame of a celebrity to a brand and getting people idolized to the product, is known as celebrity endorsement (Geppert, n.d.). Brands tend to focus on influencers because they can create trends and encourage followers to buy the products they promote. According to a survey by Nielsen, 92% of customers are more receptive to an influencer than an advertisement or traditional celebrity endorsement (McGuire, 2017). The influences of influencers cannot be underestimated, as they play a role in connecting followers and brands since everything is more inclined to mobile-based due to the rapid development of the technology industry.
Influencers were able to use the interactive sticker such as a two-option poll, question and answer box, four option quiz and emoji slider on Instagram. The rapid growth of influencers also brings up a lot of negative factors. In order to pursue perfect content results and higher reach to their followers, many influencers began to manipulate photos and pretend perfection on social media. The most common phenomenon seen on Instagram is picture-perfect and lack of authenticity which distorted Instagram’s original intention leads users to a worse pathway. People tend to obsess their ideal version on social media to create a sense of satisfying and perfect goal. However, the truth can’t be denied that a perfect photo can get a lot of likes and also a big payoff for an influencer, but it also derives from some broader behaviour issues.
The Royal Society for Public Health recently named Instagram the worst mental health social media application. When we are scrolling Instagram feeds, we are exposed to a variety of idealized photos, we will start to make comparisons with those photos, and we will feel anxious at the same time. But in fact, the back of these ideal photos might have a huge gap between reality that we don’t know, and they won’t want to share it. This behaviour makes users start to strive for unrealistic expectations and lower their self-esteem and mental health. There is anxiety, social media fear among them such as spam, rude comments and internet bullying are booming the culture of influencer marketing. Influencer affected by negative emotions and getting pressure invisibly.
Alexandra Mondalek, a fashion reporter in New York who Instagram for nine months due to mental health issues. She said she felt so much anxiety in that and certain pressure to make a brand of herself. She started to put as much weight into Instagram and worry about the performance of her post. Unfortunately, a likely glamorous job might seem enticing to everyone, but there’s the dark side of it that needs to have a strong mind to deal with (Gritters, 2019).
Instagram’s Effort To Improve Its Platform
UX design for mobile commands, navigation and important features like stories are all accessible on a tablet even when the app is viewed in landscape mode. The designer should understand accessible to all digital devices are vital for now and adopt a responsive UI design to keep consistency. Besides, keeping the design consistent helps users eliminate confusion and is easy to across different platforms to reach a good user experience. Instagram creates a responsive design for users while transforming from mobile to tablet or desktop, as a result, to let users have a seamless experience on different devices. According to Uxmasters study, nearly half of the mobile users use them with one hand when they no need to type (Jimenez, 2018). Instagram notices this user behaviour and takes it as a consideration while designing the actions including scrolling, liking, tapping into stories or the next story which are all can be done by one hand.
As a designer, getting the knowledge and skills to improve the user experience of social media including some specific interactive features in it to create a connection between influencers with their audience. The design industry starts to pay attention to social media platforms as it has a high demand for real-time and interactive content to its users. So, designers play the role of creating a well smooth user experience for social media by developing visually appealing and interactable content. Designers assisted social media platforms to create a complete user flow to enhance the UX experience. Of course, they are also one of the social media users. Unlike other influencers, they use social media to share their works and also find like-minded people on the platform, communicate with each other, support and even get inspiration from each other. When they upload their work, it seems as a self-branding. Instagram can be described as a “self-promoting platform” for everyone (Humbert, n.d.). A designer’s Instagram account can become a mini version of a portfolio as a personal brand.
“Likes” is an important social reward of Instagram, which directly shows the popularity of the user. As the previous paragraph mentioned, Instagram becomes harmful which brings depression and anxiety to users. The result of this survey shows how many likes might drive feelings of anxiety in young people, they also delete some posts that get fewer likes. Such a result shows that social media seems to have deviated from the original intention of making friends and sharing but become a platform to pursue attention and getting likes. So, in 2019, Instagram is making the change to remove the “like” function in some regions, to create a platform that allows users to focus more on authentic content they share and spend more time communicating with others. Instagram chief Adam Mosseri says that removing likes was about creating a less pressurized environment where people feel comfortable expressing themselves. Instagram is committed to creating a low pressurized platform, and the elimination of likes count has reached the goal of improving mental health among young people (Butterworth, 2019).
Another new feature will be the alert “You’re All Caught Up” on the users’ feed. Most users are used to scroll through the app mindlessly, this feature able to remind the users that they have “caught up” all the posts and can put the time back on their side (Murphy, 2018). Thanks to the new feature that helps those users who suffer FOMO feel better when they get the alert and stop passively scrolling the Instagram feeds. This feature provides a well-intentioned and straightforward reminder to their users which enhances the user experience.
A key purpose for Instagram is to come out with a safe platform for their user without criticism, negative comments and cyberbullying, a note mentioned by Instagram chief Adam Mosseri (Hutchinson, 2019). In order to combat cyberbullying and protect users from harassment, Instagram rolled out a new feature called “Restrict”. The feature allows users to limit unwanted interactions with offensive or abusive language, which include comment filters on live videos, machine-learning technology to detect bullying in photos (Lorenz, 2018).
Conclusion
Instagram is great for social networking because it provides users with a community to connect and interact with others, helping hundreds of people connect, and it has changed the way we live our lives to communicate, discover, and participate. But it also hides some dark side, the right and positive way to use Instagram does not create a negative impression of human life. The use of social media is intrinsically associated with mental health, especially for younger users and influencers, who are influential to society. Hence, that’s the thing we need to appreciate that Instagram has not shirked or passed the buck when it comes to these problems. Instead, Instagram spares no effort to come up with the right solutions to tackle and confront online bully issues.
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