With more than 500 million users, Instagram has become the home for visual storytelling for celebrities, brands, teens, musicians, and pretty much anyone with a camera to capture and share the world’s moments.
Back in the day Instagram was mainly used to post pictures of yourself or your perfectly brewed cup of coffee and to tag your friends in an endless stream of funny or interesting posts. Nowadays, the platform is widely used to inspire the crowd. Popular pages include people showing how to do your make-up perfectly, how to loose weight and show pictures of well-known models. The result? Instagram is turning into a platform facilitating vanity, through an overwhelming amount of pictures of seemingly perfect lifestyles and toned body’s.
U could imagine the impact of these shared moments on users with confidence and/or mental health problems. The amount of ‘ selfharming’ hash tags (e.g. #cutting, #selfharm, #thinspiration) will give you thousands of pictures of everything you can imagine and beyond, giving self-destructive behaviour a platform rather than the happy and interesting moments in our day-to-day life. With over 350 million people of all ages suffering from depression, this is not something to ignore.
Instagram recently acknowledged its responsibility towards the wellbeing of users and visitors of the platform and has come up with a new feature, to tackle this increasing problem within its community. The new feature will allow users to anonymously flag a photo when they think the person that posted it needs help. When flagged, the person will receive an automatically generated message, which states “Someone saw one of your posts and thinks you might be going through a difficult time. If you need support, we’d like to help”. After which the user can choose between a couple of options. Chief Operating Officer Marne Levine says that the tool is designed to let you know that you are surrounded by a community that cares about you, at a moment when you might most need that reminder.
In addition, specific tags associated self-harming acts, have been banned of the platform, discouraging the community to post pictures regarding these topics.
It’s great to see how a popular platform like Instagram is using its power to help people dealing with depressions or low self-esteem issues, rather than only focus on reach and popularity. Personally, I hope that other platforms will follow and start acknowledging their role in helping their users around the world.
1http://hellogiggles.com/instagrams-new-feature-mental-health/
2http://www.lindanieuws.nl/nieuws/meer-dan-filter-instagram-biedt-nu-ook-psychische-hulp/
3https://www.instagram.com/about/us/
Dear Nienke, thanks for your post. I had not heard about Instagram showing their social responsibility through trying to help users that are in need. However, your sentence explaining that specific tags associated with self-harming acts are banned from the planned, trying to discourage the community to post about this. Isn’t this kinda opposing the idea of trying to help users that are in need? To be able to help them, one must see that someone needs help, but if they can’t really post about it, how can we see if someone needs help? What is your thought on this?
Hey Nienke,
I did not know this about Instagram! I spend a lot of my time on Instagram, and while it is mostly to read short stories and admire beautiful photography, an initiative like helping people out of depression is quite a helpful one. It is good to know that Instagram’s huge customer base may turn into a caring and helpful community, where people who need help can find it :).
I am curious though about what help options the company provides the person whose picture has just been flagged, and how does it handle it from there. It wouldn’t be unnatural for Instagram’s help model to be similar to Facebook’s suicide prevention tool, after all, Facebook is the parent company. 😀
Thank you for this great post. With all the concerns regarding privacy issues we might face when engaging in online community, it is comforting to know that the virtual community can offer more benefits then I would think of before. The post made me curious about the help that online community or in overall the internet could bring us, therefore, I did a bit search myself and would love to share with you the results.
Firstly, self-help group (also called mutual help or mutual aid groups—are composed of peers who share a similar mental, emotional, or physical problem, or who are interested in a focal issue, such as education or parenting, as you mentioned in your blog those who have self-destructive intentions. (Minddisorders.com, 2016)
In the past, such self-help group gather together in a room and communicate, share their stories and feelings, hoping to get released or helped within the group. With the quick emerge of Internet of things, people live lives with less boundaries and more easy-access resources. Therefore, it rather not a big surprise to know that self-help group is nowadays also online and has become increasingly popular over the world. I have also found many website providing online-support for depressed people such as: Mental Earth Community, Cyberpsychologist, Find the Light and so on. (Mentalhelp.net, 2016) Now even social media like Instagram has paid more attention on the online mental care field, it is defiantly a good thing to do and I believe more and more people will be more motivated to join its community just for the care. And I agree completely that other big online community such as Facebook should have join in the line as it already collects so many personal data from all the users (not particularly a good thing but can be used for a good cause), it might be even more helpful consider the larger user base.
sorry, forgot to add the reference:
Mentalhelp.net. (2016). Community and On-line Self-Help Resources for Major Depression. [online] Available at: https://www.mentalhelp.net/articles/community-and-on-line-self-help-resources-for-major-depression/ [Accessed 22 Oct. 2016].
Minddisorders.com. (2016). Self-help groups – therapy, adults, person, people, brain, women, health, Introduction. [online] Available at: http://www.minddisorders.com/Py-Z/Self-help-groups.html [Accessed 22 Oct. 2016].
Dear Nienke, thank you for your blog. I indeed believe it is great that Instagram is trying to help and offer different possibilities to limit these hashtags or posts, but I honestly think it will not matter much. For the majority of people who look for #thinspiration or #selfharm, I think such a community will find new ways to share what they want to share. For example, they could come up with different hashtags that only the community knows, or make their profiles private and only allow people to follow them who they are sure of they won’t report their photo. But, in the end, the fact that Instagram is trying to limit this behaviour is a very positive sign, and every person they can help is another person. Hence, if the people indeed get the option through the app to receive help, this could greatly benefit/help a number of people.
Hey! Thank you for your post. I agree that it is a good idea to help people dealing with psychological disorders via Instagram. Only, did you also know that researchers actually built an algorithm to find out which people on Instagram are suffering from a depression?
You can read it more about that here: http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/instagram-photos-show-if-users-are-depressed-lm3k0cbh8
In the future, Instagram might not need a separate button to help people suffering from depression, because the algorithm can find them already.
Hi Nienke,
Thanks for your interesting post! I think that Instagram has made a huge step in this situation. Just like you said, instead of focusing on popularity and reach, they really want to provide the platform the best support and control the content. Other big community providers such as Facebook or Pinterest should take a look at this as well. However, another major problem which still is uncovered, is the low self-esteem of young women whom are active on Instagram. In fact, if you take a peek behind this social media curtain, you will find that it has created a rating system in which women are basing their entire self-worth on. The worst part of that is, according to a study made by the University of Buffalo, those with the lowest self-esteem tend to be most affected by the “like” economy. These individuals statistically post more selfies then their peers, all because they are looking for validation – not for the unique individual personalities that they are inside but for what they look like on the outside. What do you think about that?
Hi Nienke!
Thanks for your post. There was also a study conducted on the relationship between the amount of time an individual spends on social media and the risk for depression, which showed that the two are positively correlated – Those who check social media most frequently were 2.7 times more likely to be depressed. I think it’s a great idea that Instagram already offers this ‘support’ function to those who may be in need of help. Since Instagram is only one of the many social media mediums, I think it may be good for other platforms to also look into this. To give an example – Unfortunately, there have been cases in the news where individuals have posted statuses on Facebook before committing suicide. Maybe Facebook could create an algorithm that detects words in a particular context. When a life-threatening update is posted, an automatic message is sent to ensure the individual is okay and to ensure they know that the community cares – similarly like what Instagram is doing.
– http://www.medicaldaily.com/social-media-major-depressive-disorder-mental-health-379396
He Nienke,
Thanks for your interesting post. It was quit shocking to see that so many people suffer from a depression in the world. In your post you say that Instagram coming with a new feature what allow users to anonymously flag a photo when they think the person that posted it needs help. What kind of help do you think this person need? and how will Instagram help this person? You also hope that other platforms will follow, should the other platforms do it with the same feature as Instagram or should they provide a new feature that suits the platform more?
Greets,
Riemer
Thank you for your contribution, it’s nice to see that Instagram takes his responsibility and added the specific flag option. Other parties are also working to raise awareness of such depression and mental issues among users. A good example is the ‘like my Addiction’ campaign made by Paris advertising agency BETC. The campaign in a nutshell: A glamorous Instagram star (65,000 followers) who looked like she was living the party life has been unveiled as the figurehead of a campaign to fight alcohol addiction. After posting 149 photo’s in a two month time period she posted the next video to reveil the truth of her Instagram presence. Take a look at the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecRheslTlwE, I found it a very strong action.
As a daily user of Instagram i think this is a interesting article about it. I have been member of Instagram since almost the beginning and i have indeed also see the change within years of this application. Nowadays i cannot remember a day without being on intagram for at least once. To me it is very interesting to follow others in their daily life. I didn’t know about the new feature and it is an interesting one. I can believe that people will have benefits from it because it gives you the feeling that ‘the community is around you’, and that is a very nice thing that instagram have developed. It is in my eyes also an eye-opener for other platforms, because it could be very beneficial in the future.
I am very curious about instagrams next new features because it is very interesting that they acknowledge the fact that they have some sort of responsibility towards their users.
Dear Nienke,
Thank you for this insightful article. Social Media becomes more and more captivating for me, and I often find myself deliberating upon the social and psychological effects it has. Sometimes focusing on the entire platform as a player is even more revealing about the state of the users rather than the accumulation of the user’s content itself.
It is not clear what the reason for the mental or health issues of some users is. Some critics imply that those effects are exacerbated by the “impossible standards of beauty and five-star lifestyles” which are flooding the Instagram feed (Clark, 2016). Indeed, some of the negative effects might be attributable to such content. However, let’s not forget about the initial value proposition of this platform. Sharing positive moments has the psychological effect of augmenting them. Directing the human brain to think in positive frames actually takes up space in the human’s cognition, and there is less cognitive availability for negative thoughts, let alone harmful ones. With this initial ambition to make the act of sharing a celebration of each day’s subtle beauties, Instagram has one of the best value propositions among all social media types, at least in my opinion. It is very rewarding to see how people pick up the trend of portraying positive emotions through visual and video content. This is the major victory Instagram has achieved.
Of course, there are side effects to such an influence, and those side effects could be divided in two themes, the vanity theme and the well-being theme. The vanity theme is the direct consequence of the desire to be observed, followed and discussed either because one has a desire to manage attention or because one likes to provoke. Of course, the desire to provoke attention is nothing to be critiqued about, but on the contrary. Vanity, however, emerges from the fact that attention revolves only about the fanciness within the image; thus, the primary purpose of sharing the image, promoting well-being, is still present, but served from a different perspective. It is hard to treat vanity as a promoter of well-being, but this is at least what strong minds would be tempted to do. After all, directing one’s attention to affluence already achieves a good state of mind.
The well-being theme is a consequence of the vanity theme, as is correctly observed in the post (Clark, 2016). By the preventive acts of Instagram we can conclude that it is not putting blame or restriction on the affluence and vanity shown on the platform. Rather, as already stated, it aims at reaching the suffering individual directly.
The lesson that could be learned form the preventative strategy Instagram is taking is that it is a highly individual matter of how images of perfection would be perceived. A person can choose whether to let comparisons bring down one’s self-esteem, or on the contrary, to get inspired by the success stories of such affluent individuals and to use this motivation to personal advantage. The choice is all ours. We determine the perspective we see the world from.
Sources:
Clark, L. (2016). Instagram’s new tool offers support to people with mental health issues. Retrieved on October 23, 2017 from http://www.wired.co.uk/article/instagram-tool-tackles-self-harm-and-provides-support
Instagram (2017) Self-injury. Retrieved on October 23, 2017 from https://help.instagram.com/553490068054878