How does Instagram make you feel?

I never understood why people disliked social media, or instagram or it made them depressed.
I normally completely love instagram and it never bothers me, I find it always very inspiring and super creative people on there.
But today I’m looking at people decorating their nurseries, and doing engagement photos, painting their new house and I wonder why they were so fortunate? Even tho I’ve had an interesting life, all I’ve done for a decade is suffer.
I feel like I have a very very unfortunate fate. All I wanted from life was a little house, husband and to paint. I didn’t have any huge dreams, but it all eluded me.

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TinyViolins · 31-35, M

I've never used it personally, but at work I would see all the young ladies glued to their phones as they scrolled through an endless list of photos. It's like they were in a trance, completely unaware of their surroundings.

I think apps like that breed addiction and disconnect people from their surroundings. I don't think that the content on Instagram is necessarily bad, but I feel like the algorithms behind it leech away our ability to focus or to be alone with our thoughts. It's like watching people hypnotized by slot-machines

sirenofthesea · F

@TinyViolins yea I completely agree, I only use it for ten mins mercifully. But I have seen these sorts of zombies.

TinyViolins · 31-35, M

@sirenofthesea I also have some gripes with the selfie culture, in part because it normalizes vanity and self-absorption, but also for the mental health impact on younger girls.

It makes them almost compete with one another for positive attention because the app essentially equates beauty and value with the number of likes you get. There has been a spike in anxiety and self-harm behaviors following the rise of Instagram in 2013, and I think the phenomena are very closely linked

sirenofthesea · F

Yea definitely it must be taking a toll on their mental health, I follow only really creative individuals and sort of cottagecore and it’s more about how creative you can be.@TinyViolins I follow girls like this https://www.instagram.com/adventuringbeth/ so I don’t get any exposure to beauty queens competing for attention or kardashian type stuff. Lots of young women are getting into this sort of cottagecore, so hopefully that will leave a better impression.

TinyViolins · 31-35, M

@sirenofthesea Yeah that's always the difficult part of social media because there are so many creative uses for it. People get exposed to all kinds of new ideas and inspirations from strangers all over the world. You really get to capture a diverse range of influences with it. I'm not knocking that part.

It's just that young people in particular who don't have experience or agency in the real world default to using it as a means of finding a place in the social hierarchy. I kinda wish there was an age limit that allowed kids to fall away from that mentality

BetweenKittensandRiots · 36-40, MVIP

@TinyViolins @sirenofthesea https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-knows-instagram-is-toxic-for-teen-girls-company-documents-show-11631620739

You're not wrong. I say this as a -well- known techno optimist too.

People KNOW I'm excited about technology and am trying to work in the field.

And yet I'm disillusioned and well aware it has downsides.

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