Instagram is a photosharing app that everybody knows and loves. We love mindless scrolling, liking photos of our friends and our favorite celebrities, and posting about what we’ve been up to on our feeds and our stories.
But lately, Instagram has become so much more than a social media app meant for pure fun. It’s become an app of validation and of displaying perfection. Dozens of filters are put on photos to make them look completely different than what they originally looked like. “Candid” photos are actually incredibly posed. Certain angles are used to take photos to hide our flaws and make ourselves appear thinner or more angular than we actually are. Every photo displays a perfect smile with perfect friends and family.
“Friends” comment on photos about how beautiful we are or how amazing our captions are–captions that people thought about for hours and asked about ten different people if it was a good caption. There are specific times of day where more people are likely to see your photo and like your photo, resulting in a higher amount of likes (because we all know triple digits or higher is “totally what we need”), so people wait to post a photo until that time in order to receive the most likes possible. As for photos that display us naturally laughing or living as we do each and every day, or displaying emotions other than complete and utter happiness, those are a complete no-go–absolutely no signs that we are flawed human beings can be posted on Instagram.
Do you see how silly this all sounds? I feel silly just having to write about it. It’s nothing more than a social media app on our phones. It shouldn’t be anything to worry about; it’s supposed to be for fun and to keep in touch with family and friends.
But, Instagram has become a very sinister place for some people. The amount of likes on photos has become a source of validation for the person posting it; likes equates to how many people like you as a person or consider you beautiful. People message their friends asking them for likes in order to get more. If someone doesn’t like your photo, it must mean they hate you. Again, all of this sounds ridiculous because it’s just an app.
However, because of the high standards of beauty and perfection displayed on every photo, people post that they’re quitting Instagram because they can’t stop comparing themselves to others who seem to have the perfect life; they aren’t able to achieve the unachievable, fake standards posted on Instagram.
Since people’s mental health is suffering as a result of a mere app, I think it’s time that society rethinks what Instagram really should be.
Instagram should simply be a place to post photos because we like them, not because we think other people will like them. We should post ourselves unedited, unfiltered, exactly as who we are. We should only follow people we want to follow, not because everyone else follows them. We should comment on people’s photos not because we feel obligated and want other people to comment on our photos, but because we genuinely feel like we want to comment. We should post when we want to post, not when other people will be on Instagram. We should represent ourselves on Instagram as we are in real life: naturally beautiful, unedited, unfiltered, flawed, and human.
That’s why for the month of November, I will be participating in #nofilterNovember. All of my photos posted will be unedited and unfiltered, and will capture me as I am and the rest of the world as how I see it.
Let’s bring back some authenticity to Instagram. Who’s with me?
TESS CARCALDI 