Chaykowski, Kathleen.  “Instagram Reaches 600 Million Monthly Users, Doubling In Size In Two Years”. Forbes. December 15, 2016

https://www.forbes.com/sites/kathleenchaykowski/2016/12/15/instagram-reaches-600-million-monthly-users-doubling-in-size-in-two-years/#3821945e1b24

Franta, Connor.  “A Guide to the Perfect Instagram” YouTube. Nov 2, 2015.  Web.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6G139NrUoQQ

“Instagram”.  Wikipedia. Web.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instagram

Jenkins, Tom.  “Five years on: Untangling Instagram’s growing web of

influence”. CNN. October 22, 2015. Web.  http://www.cnn.com/2015/10/22/fashion/instagram-is-changing-the-world/

Loren, Taylor.  “The Ultimate Guide to Instagram Hashtags in 2017” March 30, 2017. Web.

https://later.com/blog/ultimate-guide-to-using-instagram-hashtags/

Mariella, Adriana. “How Instagram Is Affecting The Way We Perceive Ourselves And The World Around

Us”. Elite Daly. Jun 24^th, 2014. Web.  http://elitedaily.com/life/culture/x-pro-ii-valencia-instagram-choose-neither/614571/

McNamara, Brittney.  “Looking at Instagram Could Make Your Grades and Body Image

Worse” Teen Vogue.  August 12, 2016.  Web.  http://www.teenvogue.com/story/instagram-grades-body-image-effects

Moritz, Donna. “7 Reasons Why I Love Instagram”. Socially Sorted. Web.

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Nicholson, Paul.  “How To: Use Instagram Stories – Beginner 2017 Tutorial”. YouTube.  Web.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WOqwuwlIl2Q

O’Connor, Maureen. “Stealing From the Paparazzi to Feed Instagram”.  Nov. 19^th 2013.  New York

Magazine.  Web.  http://nymag.com/thecut/2013/11/stealing-from-the-paparazzi-to-feed-instagram.html

Weber, Meghan. “Why Instagram Is Good For Your Soul” The Odyssey.  March 28, 2016.  Web.

https://www.theodysseyonline.com/why-instagram-good-for-your-soul

Life will never be as perfect as we try to make it on Instagram or any other social platform.  Instagram is a relatively safe and fun way to enter the social realm of the 21st century, as long as we don’t lose sight of the people behind the usernames, hashtags, and filters. We do not need to quantify how much people like us, or see the gaining of followers as personal achievement.  However, if someone truly enjoys and gains a certain level of contentment or happiness from Instagram, there is no harm, no foul.  Also be aware that Instagram does influence our literacy and our sociability, so don’t blindly follow.  And Remember: be kind online, and everyone looks better using X-Pro II and Valencia.

Instagram is not an inherent evil.  There I said it.  Although there are plenty of courses of food for thought, some may argue that Instagram makes us more adventerous people, gives us new goals, and empowers users through technology.  A teen user discusses why Instagram reaps benefits here.

Another blogger shares why she loves Instagram, with reasons ranging from: visual aspects, being social, fun, forgiving, and free, etc.  I do agree with both individuals on certain levels.  Yet, I do not want to take Instagram at face value, pun intended.

Although I personally enjoy Instagram, I know I have posted, or premeditated posts etc. due to its influence.  That is why drawing the distinction between “extremely good” and “sorta good” I would pick sorta.  I think Instagram is fun and can share many aspects of life with those around us in an easy way, but I do think that the pressures and the literal editing of reality only make Instagram partially good. Looking into the future, I would argue that Instagram could be better with better explanation to users before they begin their Instagram journey–therefore they can get a leg up on their literacy, and realize that a filter can sometime have all the power.  I think that users should try to limit their use of Instagram to a comfortable level, where I think that Instagram would pose less of a threat to self-esteem and other negative effects.   I also think that removing Instagram Stories, the 24 hour posts for followers to see, would eliminate some of the pressure without losing all of the new features Instagram has to offer.  I wish there was a clear-cut solution for every user, but to empower ones’ self, we all need to disempower the application.  Instagram leaves behind a warped reality, but if we can get ahead of our comparisons and assumptions, I think it could be much safer and more fun than it is now.

 

Since we have discussed the affects of hashtags and the use of outside applications within Instagram, as well as some of the overarching social affects, it is time to think about how else Instagram pressures us.

Do you feel there is a need to have the “perfect Instagram”? On many levels users compete with one another for, at the very least, attention.  Connor Franta quotes in his Guide to the Perfect Instagram, that Instagram allows us to be “faking reality since 2010”. Outside of the photo-editing capabilities of Instagram he uses four different applications for a single photograph.  That makes me question, are we really that motivated by photography, or are we on the pursuit of perfection?  I personally believe the latter.

Clearly an application used to be social is meant to bring people together. That is the intention.  Yet I have a hard time believing that we are successfully executing that concept.  Yet, as we discussed how hashtags and the application “know-how” affect the literacy involved in Instagram, I feel it is fair to say that Instagram can really damage self esteem, as well as an individual’s concept of reality and other’s reality.  For example, in 2016 Teen Vogue discussed how looking at Instagram could make a person’s body image, and subsequently their grades worse.  They even used the example of looking at your friend’s beach pics, not even celebrities.

I think Instagram can divide people based on beauty and aesthetics, even if it is just the clever use of photo editing literacy being practiced.  And overall, the practice of Instagram’s social literacy is affecting the young population the most.

My favorite exerpt from Adriana Mariella discusses the dangers of Instagram, and encapsulates how even though we are “together” we are also fragmenting one another and our realities.

“What might make you green with envy through the lens of X-Pro II might, at best, be mediocre through the lens of real life. When we look at Instagram, we see a life literally cropped and filtered — a perfectly-set dining room table, while there’s a half-renovated living room just beyond the frame.

Instagram is imperatively filled with half-truths and optimizations of life, yet we still use it to gauge our own. For some reason, though, we don’t consider Instagram photos to be as manipulative of reality as the photos in magazines.

This is because despite the editing, they seem more accessible because we know the photographers.”

The full article can be found here.

 

According to Taylor Loren from Later.com, Instagram posts with at least one hashtag average 12.6% engagement (commenting or liking) than those without any hashtags.  Hashtags are essentially a mode to gain popularity, followers, and likes on your Instagram account.

If you have an Instagram account, and odds are that you do, you have most likely used a hashtag of some variety. Socially, these hashtags are to connect users through commonality, yet there are many popular hashtags to choose from.  For example,

#WCW #WomanCrushWednesday or #MCM #ManCrushMonday (both of these to celebrate the significant other in your life, or share a new relationship)

#TBT #ThrowbackThursday or #FBF or #FlashBackFriday (for these you can share a photo from yesteryear, however many users consider last week a “throwback” or “flashback” for some reason…)

#ImWithHer or #MAGA (for politicians and political influence)

Socially, we use these hashtags to potentially see other individuals that have similar posts to us.  However, we have to be literate in these terms and others to be a functioning member of the Instagram world. We essentially gain a literacy when we gain followers, etc. from Instagram because it means we are doing something “right”.  Yet, we seem to be enabling one of our more vulnerable populations with this literacy, our teens and young adults.

Raise your hand if you do not use or have an Instagram account.  With Instagram currently holding over 600 million monthly users, it is not surprising that if you are under the age of 35, you are a part of the statistic.  Yet an entity so vast would have to hold incredible influence, right? Right.

Instagram is changing the rhetoric around us in an almost seemingly invisible way.  It appears to be a silent influence, because Instagram tugs a heavy pull on the way we share and view art, fashion, fame, food, travel, and activism to name a few.  The world of art and fashion now have an exponentially greater visibility to the average social user, intertwining marketing and artistic value.  Celebrities now have much greater control over the dialogues in which they share with the public.  They are the ones deciding to share their baby bumps and engagement rings, which has even lead to friction and decline of the importance of paparazzi.  For example, maybe if Brittany Spears would have had access to photo sharing with her fans during her tumultuous time in 2007, she would not have had that infamous run-in with the umbrella smashing a paparazzi’s window.  Maybe.

Yet even the way we can share images of food has been influenced by the way others will see what is on our plate.  Perhaps we are more adventurous in our culinary interests now, or merely are there for the aesthetics.  Either way, without Instagram, there would be no “Food Porn” or sharing of images that evoke envy from followers that are not able to enjoy what is in front of you on your plate.  In another way, Instagram thrives off of the aesthetics involved in travel.  Now, incredible numbers of photos of remote areas of the world are at the user’s fingertips.  I would even argue that iconic travel destinations become even more famous due to the greater exposure.

Socially, Instagram has some of its greatest influence through hashtags, especially hashtags about activism. Instagram is the perfect campaigning tool if you think about it.  One can edit their photos to be as attractive as possible, and use a common hashtag to unite the masses.  Politicians, journalists, and activists can all benefit and proliferate their messages to the masses as much as they chose to share.

Instagram is an online application that allows users to share stories, videos, and photos and navigate through the use of hashtags. The name itself is a combination of Instant Camera + Telegram.  In October of 2010, the app was born and officially became available in the iOS app store. Instagram continued to flourish and gain popularity in ratings and number of users which made it an attractive venture for big business.  In April of 2012 Facebook bought Instagram for a billion dollars. I’ve included an interview with the mogul and founder of Instagram, Kevin Systrom here.  The need for growing social platforms came with the boom of Facebook and Twitter, and with the success of the application Burbn created by Systrom and his co-founder Mike Krieger lead to the birth of Instagram.  A more in depth history can also be found here.  From the beginning, Instagram has been a booming social platform with over one million followers within the first year of launching the application, and those numbers only continue to competitively rise.

The first version of any application is sincerely different from the subsequent ones, and Instagram has continued to add components for the users to utilize.  However, at the beginning of Instagram’s run, it was seen as a “filter app” for editing pictures and navigating through the viewing of photos.  Instagram has continued to add features, such as 24 hour long “stories” to which users can post to their followers to view for that window of time.  Instagram now allows you to directly message other users and send posts back and forth.  As you will see in the “how-to” video for Instagram, the application requires considerable navigation skills and wherewithal to be literate through the app.  Instagram continues to go through a metamorphosis of sorts that keeps users engaged in new features, nearly all of which were not available at the start of the application.

Instagram is an application to share and discover stories, videos, and photos of friends and others around the world. With over 600 million monthly users, Instagram truly has made a strong social impact.  Through Insidestagram I hope to share some knowledge, “know-how”, and implications of this widely used technology.