I'm curious to know what this looks like for slightly older people. I can see the down side to Instagram: the way it can amplify an obsession with the way things appear from curated snapshots of someone else's seemingly perfect life. And it definitely has less nuanced communication of certain types of ideas - it's not a place to discuss the merits of social policy. But as someone who is slightly older than this 14-24 generation, who finds enriching food-for-thought elsewhere and who isn't obsessed with how other people's lives look, I find Instagram to be the most uplifting of the major networks. It's often more light-hearted than Facebook, and most accounts I follow are purely posting pictures of new products in fields that interest me, pictures of friends doing fun things with their kids, etc. There's much less political flaming, dumb memes, etc. than I unavoidably see elsewhere. I deleted Facebook and LinkedIn from my phone because Facebook just made me feel angry and LinkedIn is just spam and self-congratulation. Instagram is the only major social network still on my phone.<p>For people who are mature enough to self-regulate and not get addicted to scrolling up and updating their feed, and for people who can avoid an unhealthy level of envying how other's lives appear to be, it seems like a pretty good way to stay up to date with people and hobbies.
Anecdotal, but there is a documentary right now on danish television, on 4 young girls stressing about, having to be perfect, and bad mental health/self esteem.. and it looks a lot like most of them have an instagram addiction. One chooses places to eat etc. on what would look best on instagram. One aimmessly browsers pretty girls, to see how should look herself.
Interesting. Most of the people I know on it post less than on Facebook and there's a much higher ratio of other photos to selfies/screenshots compared to other social networks. I only post a couple times a month when I feel like I have a photo worth posting.<p>As more people move over from mainline Facebook and Facebook adds more Facebooky features to Instagram, I expect it will get less useful for this. There's also not a lot of timeline control, so you do end up with situations where someone goes on a trip and suddenly you have 20 posts in a row from a single person at Disneyland.<p>I suppose if you're using it as an all-purpose social network and trying to maintain a persona, the inability to post anything other than pictures applies a lot of pressure to always have exciting new pictures to post.
I remember when Insta was "newer", people used to comment on how much nicer it made them feel compared to Facebook. I also felt that same. But I guess beyond a point, all social networks turn into bit of a rat-race, which also reminds me of college.
> <i>"Respondents were asked to score how each of the social media platforms they use impact upon issues such as anxiety, loneliness and community building. The site with the most positive rating was YouTube, followed by Twitter. Facebook and Snapchat came third and fourth respectively."</i><p>YouTube had the most positive rating!? I'm honestly not sure what to make of this. The experience of 14-24 year olds must be vastly different to the comments etc I've seen there.
FYI suicide rates for 10-14 years old have increased 250%+ since 2007.<p>I know of no other way to more accurately measure the decline and sickness of an age than the number of children that want to willingly kill themselves.<p>Source is the CDC Mortality Statistics and also Dr. Jean Twenge out of San Diego.
<i>survey found the photo-sharing app negatively impacted on people's body image, sleep and fear of missing out</i><p>That’s funny because I (not young) get a bit of joy from Instagram. The FOMO makes me travel and do things I wouldn’t otherwise. My wife encouraged me to start capturing the beautiful things I see and now I go back to my profile[0] and relive some amazing and beautiful moments. The ripped guys (and gals) on there remind me to hit the gym.<p>Instead I think it’s all about perspective. My wife says “comparison is the thief of joy”. I don’t compare myself to what I find on IG. I use to to inspire me as to what’s possible.<p>Facebook and Twitter, by contrast, are full of mean people saying mean things. That makes me feel yuck inside. So I try to avoid both.<p>0: <a href="https://www.instagram.com/ryan_marsh/" rel="nofollow">https://www.instagram.com/ryan_marsh/</a>
I really wonder what the user experience would be like if only the creator of the post could see the "likes" on Instagram and Facebook. Similar to Snapchat, I think it would alleviate some of this anxiety and need for validation if we didn't see how much attention our friends get on social media.
Link to report cited in the article:<p><a href="https://www.rsph.org.uk/uploads/assets/uploaded/62be270a-a55f-4719-ad668c2ec7a74c2a.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://www.rsph.org.uk/uploads/assets/uploaded/62be270a-a55...</a>
I think this goes for all the mainstream social networks. They are just echo chambers where people feed their ego on the ego of others. In the past 4 years I've been cutting down on all this crap, not because I couldn't handle it, but because it provides 0 value to me and only consumes time. Still got all the accounts but dont use them. Cut out snapchat, twitter, facebook, instagram and like 20 news portals. Currently only look at HN to keep up to date and sometimes open Reddit. No games no nothing on the phone. Entertainment is at home or out with friends.
I can believe this - even though as other people mention the study seems poorly designed.<p>That said I literally just use Instagram for dogs and nothing else. So it’s just a source of joy :)
Whatever is the current most popular form of social media will always be the worst for people's mental health.<p>Like fb ranks lower on how much stress it induces since "kids these days" simply don't use it much.
After reviewing the report and the associated studies, there are no indicators that this is a causal relationship - just correlations. My immediate reaction is "why are we ruling out the possibility that they are on Instagram / Fb / (insert network of choice) because they do not have healthy EQ (emotional intelligence as a proxy for "mental health" here?)"<p>I don't have skin in this fight, but I am extremely skeptical of "correlation over causation" with specious conclusions that justify certain opinions that are popular here on HN.
I deleted it a month ago. Complete useless waste of time. It's filled with purely narcissistic photos. It can't possibly be healthy for anyone.