A Healthier Relationship With Instagram
In August of last year, I did a write up on reevaluating our relationship with Instagram. If you haven’t noticed, the downward spiral of the “social media” giant has marched on, and nearly every week, features that nobody asked for are being released, while several major issues are consistently ignored. I still love the ability to connect with people around the world on Instagram as I’ve observed their work and shared my own, however in many areas the platform has become more frustrating to use, and our feeds are filled with things that are less meaningful to us. I feel the need to once again evaluate how I use it. For those that use the app enough to care, read on as I offer my thoughts on how we can have a healthier relationship with it.
So far, this headline from popular tech site Gizmodo, published in July of last year, seems to be proving true.
The many problems with Instagram
In the aforementioned blog post, I talked about the blatant profits-over-people model of Instagram, and how user feedback is constantly ignored. One of the main changes that people have largely been disappointed in is that our feeds consist more and more of recommendations of what “the algorithm” thinks we’ll like, and less of what we actually follow and truly want to see. Also, especially upsetting for photographers, the flatform started favoring video content over photos. Another major change which was very important to creators was the fact that for most, reach to their own followers plummeted. While not everyone pays attention to these metrics, it’s noteworthy that an overwhelming majority of users report a major decline in reach.
In the latest feature release that nobody asked for, Adam Mosseri, head of Instagram, started by saying, “I post on Instagram a lot, and I read the comments, and the two things I see the most often are requests to be verified, and requests for customer support”. As expected, many respondents on that post were confused by this statement, since it only takes a bit of reading comments on any of his posts to know that the most mentioned issue is reach, or “the algorithm”. I considered doing some analysis to back this up statistically, however I decided against it, in part because it’s easy to see the evidence without going through that hassle. Though the image below shows a small sample of comments, you’ll see the same trend by going to any post on Mosseri’s page and looking through a few handfuls of responses. It’s easy fact checking, since regardless of the topic of his posts, we find that clearly the most popular subject matter of input is fixing the reach. In this latest feature announcement, Mosseri continued to explain a new paid subscription, which will provide account verification, live chat support, and increased reach. That’s right, now we can look forward to even more junk in our feeds from people that paid to put it there, instead of from the creatives that we follow and want to see. Oh, and how could I forget, your monthly payment will also get you exclusive stickers! In summary, Instagram does not care that most users hate its changes, their bottom line is about getting users to spend more time in the app, therefore leading to more ad revenue, and now on top of that, what profit motivated services they can get users to pay cash for, on top of the time and content they already pay. In this specific case, instead of doing anything to prevent hackers from stealing accounts, or reducing bots and spam, they’ve opted to charge users to feel that their account is less likely to get hacked.
In this post, when multiple updates were announced related to creator marketplace, NFT expansion, and Reels, by and large the comments simply requested that the reach drop be fixed. This is a pattern seen on essentially all of Mosseri’s posts.
What should we do?
In my write up on Instagram last year, I talked about how we could reevaluate our relationship with Instagram and possible changes to make. More than ever, I think this is good for our well being as individuals and collectively. At the same time, we get a bonus benefit of sending a message to the powers that be in what seems to be the only language they understand: Money. Below are four things that I now do and recommend for others as well.
1) Spend less time on Instagram
Last year, I decided that I was going to post less on Instagram, about once a week, and overall spend less time in the app, as I focused on improving my photography and growing my business. Though I’m happy with the changes I’ve made, I still feel I can do more to curb my usage, and I have a hunch that most of you have similar feelings. Also, as we know, actions speak louder than words and despite Instagram receiving a mountain of complaints, the company has shown they simply want our time and money. It might seem a surprise then, that Instagram actually added options within the app that allows you to set a daily time limit for use, as well as reminder notifications at your specified interval. We shouldn’t be shocked by this though, nor fooled into thinking they actually want us to take a break from the app. This feature was added in response to media attention around concerns about many young people's harmful relationship with social media. Both android and iphone users can find the settings under options>Your Activity>Time spent. You can find more details here. Of course there’s no rule for how much time one should spend on Instagram, but I think it’s good to put some thought into how much seems healthy for you personally, and then stick to it by heeding the ‘Time Spent’ notifications. Also, if you’re interested in an alternative photo sharing app, with no ads, and a feed of ONLY those that you follow, you might want to check out Vero. I’m still getting into the habit of using it, but I do find it exteremely refreshing for these reasons.
2) Spend that time on Instagram more efficiently
Before Instagram began its descent from social network to a feed of mostly ads and recommended posts, I got so much more out of the app. I remember observing the new work from the photographers and other artists I admired, and my feed seemed to be overwhelmingly inspiring. Over time though, it became filled with content I care less about. Here are three things we can do to make our feeds and time spent in the app more meaningful:
●Use the “Favorites” and “Following” feeds instead of the home feed. I resisted utilizing the favorites feed as it seemed a poor attempt to address all of the complaints about the discontinuation of the chronological feed. Once I did try it out though, as well as the “Following” feed, I realized that it gives me a much better feed, more akin to the Instagram of old that most of us have craved. The idea for the favorites is you select 50 of your closest friends and most admired creators, and then only they will appear there, and additionally, should show up higher in your home feed. For details on using the Favorites feed, I recommend this video. Also, as a SUPER BONUS, I’ve found that my favorites feed has NO ads! Nope, not one. Because I haven’t seen this mentioned anywhere else, I’m curious if it’s just a fluke for me, or some sort of bug, so please give this a try and let me know if you get the same results. I scrolled for a good while and not once did an ad come up. If this continues to be the case, I don’t think I’ll ever use anything aside from my favorites feed! One thing to note is that sadly, this is not an option that sticks, and each time you open the app, it reverts to your default feed. For me though, it’s a simple step that is worth it to avoid ads and other unwanted posts.
● Avoid the explore page. I stopped going there a few months back and it has saved me so much time. It seems to be the place for guilty pleasures. Guilty pleasures of course have their place from time to time, but I got over the explore page when I realized that all it took was for me to look at one dad joke meme, or one fail video, and my explore page would be filled with them. It’s as if Instagram had a meeting to think of features that could act as a time sucker to keep users stuck in the app, and that’s what they came up with.
●Engage with the accounts you like. “The algorithm” uses your interactions with others to help decide how to rank what you see in your default feed. If you like and comment on the accounts you care most about, those same accounts should rank higher in your feed in the future. To go hand in hand with this, for posts about things you want to see less of, you can click on the icon with three dots and choose “Hide”, which in theory should help the algorithm to bring you less posts of that type.
3) Disable Suggested Posts
Do you get tired of seeing all those suggested posts in your feed? This is another reason we’re seeing less from those that we actually follow. This should come as no surprise, as Instagram’s parent company’s CEO, Mark Zuckerburg stated last year, “Right now, about 15% of content in a person’s Facebook feed and a little more than that of their Instagram feed is recommended by our AI from people, groups, or accounts that you don’t follow. We expect these numbers to more than double by the end of next year.” Unsurprisingly, there’s no option to turn these suggested posts off completely, however we can disable them for 30 days and repeat when they start showing up again. Simply click on the icon with the 3 dots for any suggested post, Tap “Not Interested”, and then “snooze all suggested posts in your feed for 30 days”. You can find the official instructions for this process here.
4) Don’t spend money for vanity checkmarks or exclusive stickers
It is estimated that Instagram will increase its ad revenue in 2023 to more than 50 billion dollars. Despite that, they now are looking for ways to squeeze cash from users, such as the new paid subscription for verification I mentioned above. To me, it’s a horrible idea for creators and audiences alike (all users!). I won’t dive into all of the reasons, but I’m certainly not alone in recognizing the new issues that will come with it. Once again, observing comments on Mosseri’s post, it’s easy to see the overwhelming sentiment is that it will further degrade the app. And to anyone liking the idea of increased reach apparently included in a subscription, I’m willing to bet it will still only be a fraction of what it used to be. Instagram has long profited from every user by getting them to spend as much time as possible in the app, monetizing our personal data, and serving ads, not to mention content creation which makes all of that possible. By not participating in these new subscriptions, hopefully Instagram will more clearly receive the message that we’re not interested in their new cash grabs.
If like me, you have become disappointed in the changes to Instagram, but still find it tough to abandon, I hope these tips can help. If you have any other ideas on how we can have a healthier relationship with the app, please let me know in the comments!
