Within an instant, the new instagram feature “instants” has taken off and become the hot, new and popular thing social media users are obsessed with. But how long will this obsession truly last?
Each social media app that dominates the app store offers something different for people to enjoy. Snapchat is based on back and forth selfies and private stories detailing your life for friends, and Tiktok has short videos that keep users up to date on the trends. The last app that completes the social media “big three” is Instagram.
But Instagram brings something different to the table, being an app built around aesthetics. This makes users go crazy trying to make their post layouts cohesive and appealing.
An Instagram post or feed is supposed to show off the user’s cool and interesting life by capturing memories—like a digital scrapbook.
Instagram is where people post their best photos, whether they are posing with friends and family at the beach, sharing an aesthetic picture of a small market or taking photos of a pumpkin patch with a beautiful sunset in the background. It is not meant for random pictures of themselves sitting on the couch or a picture of a friend at the gym.
Instagram has never been about posting random pictures with no thought behind them, but this is sadly what the new feature “Instants” has become.
Why did Instagram feel the need to create “Instants?” It’s all about clicks. The creators of Instagram want people to stay on the app and experience everything they can from different social media platforms right here on one.
Straying away from what the app has always been about to try something new might not seem like a bad thing to most people, but Instagram isn’t the first platform to use this idea.
It was first introduced by BeReal—an app designed around posting a picture at a certain time of day to keep people from making their lives look posed. TikTok later adopted the same concept with “TikTok Now.”
This didn’t work for these apps, so why does Instagram think bringing back an idea that skyrocketed and then quickly plummeted is such a great idea? This is especially so when it offers the exact opposite aesthetic of the app.
The feature is absolutely unnecessary and the hype will die down soon enough. It isn’t creative and copies what other apps have already implemented. There isn’t even a place for it in the app—it just looks like a glitch from bad WiFi.
Users can’t view the instant before it uploads, nor can they delete it, leading to bad pictures appearing on people’s feeds and ruining their aesthetic.
People could argue that people don’t have to scroll through the posts or even participate in this feature. But sadly, this generation suffers from a very deadly disease of FOMO (fear of missing out). As much as one hates the feature, they’re going to scroll through the photos one way or another.
Once viewing all the photos, the picture taking opportunity will appear on the screen instantaneously, not giving users any warning. People may take them by accident.
Once the instant is taken, there is nothing you can do, except deal with the fact that anyone and everyone can view a selfie that looks like a photo meant to be sent privately to a friend on Snapchat.
However, before we know it, our fingers will be relaxing more and more each day from the lesser amount of Instants to scroll through. This is how reality works: people get excited about something new but stop after the hype dies down.
Eventually a new update will come out, and the craze will disappear, allowing everything to go back to normal. So let’s save some time and stick to what we all already know and love, which is the aesthetically pleasing app of Instagram.
