I post several pictures on Instagram a week, so I may be a hypocrite for saying this, but Instagram is dumb. Coming home for the summer, everyone said, "It looked like you had so much fun at school in your Instagram pictures!" It's true, I had a lot of fun at school, but school itself was also extremely difficult and I had to work really hard to maintain my grades. However, Instagram will always only show half of the story. No one posts an Instagram picture of them studying in the library or pulling an all-nighter for a midterm. This is obvious, because who truly wants to show off a picture of them in the library with a filter?
There is nothing wrong with only presenting to people what you want them to see, but I feel as if Instagram makes people's lives look a lot cooler and exciting than they actually are. As a result of this, their followers and friends can get jealous and think they're missing out or doing something wrong. Instagram is a fun way to show your friends snippets of your life, but it has also become a silly competition to see who is doing the most awesome thing and who can get the most likes.
Going anywhere cool nowadays, especially on vacations, will always be interrupted by someone saying "Wait, let me get a picture for Instagram!" We try so hard to get a decent picture to post, and more times than not, the picture is staged and not a true depiction of real life at all. I have become one of those people who make captions for Instagram pictures before I even have a picture to post with it.
Instagram is like any other form of social media-- only showing people the best of the best, what you want to be displayed to others. 99% of pictures on Instagram are thoroughly edited using other apps before even being posted. The whole concept is superficial and fake, yet it is everyone's obsession, including mine. I think everyone realizes how dumb it is, but we just continue to use it as a form of entertainment.
It is no coincidence that everyone posts pictures on Instagram during finals week. People, including myself, post when they're studying in order to create a distraction for themselves, pass time, and conquer boredom. Nothing kills times better than constantly refreshing your likes and watching the number go up. Immediately after someone posts an Instagram, there's no talking to them; they'll just be absorbed in their phone for the next hour or two.
Whatever happened to living in the moment, and not doing things simply to get an Instagram picture? Are we going to make our future kids pose a certain way so that we can get a good picture for our Instagrams? Or is this obsession with Instagram likes going to fade with time?
Like I said before, I may be hypocritical because I love Instagram. I will probably post a staged picture of me doing something cool this week, and I will probably care about how many likes it gets. I think we all realize how dumb Instagram truly is, but will still continue using it for as long as it stays relevant.
