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Earlier this fall, while riding the subway, I overheard two friends doing some pre-party screenings. They’re both young and cool—scary, all-black New Yorkers, and the generation of the Y2K revival—and trying to figure out how to find someone smart online.
“Does he have Instagram?” one asked, before adding with a laugh: “Anyone?”
“It’s not even on my phone,” admitted another.
Even a couple of years ago, it wasn’t unheard of for these 20-somethings in New York to jump off Instagram — it’s such a sacrosanct choice that people would hesitate to start a conversation about that group going. they said. Now that’s not really surprising. Scrolling through Instagram today involves a series of sponsored posts from brands, tagged videos from people you don’t follow, and the occasional picture from a friend. appeared after posting a few days ago. It’s not what it used to be.
“Gen Z’s relationship with Instagram is the same as millennials’ relationship with Facebook: It’s a real thing,” said Casey Lewis, a youth-culture consultant who writes the youth-culture publication After School, told me by email. “They don’t want to be on top, but it’s kind of weird not to.” Now, a Piper Sandler study found that of 14,500 teenagers surveyed across 47 countries, only 20 percent named Instagram as their favorite social media platform (TikTok was first, followed by Snapchat ).
Simply put it’s on Instagram is different from being able to engage with it. The opportunity was to throw the pictures into the void, which made it a little sad. To do this is to feel completely unaware of your surroundings, such as shouting on the phone in public.
In other words, Instagram is doing us a favor: it seems like when a lover or crush does something small but obvious – like wearing a fedora – you’re instantly turned on.
“People who are not just influencers use it [Instagram] to watch other people make great posts,” said Lee Tilghman, a former full-time Instagram developer, over the phone. “My closest friends who aren’t influencers haven’t read in, like, two years.”
As always, the ick comes out of nowhere — things are good for Instagram, until they aren’t. In 2014, the app reached 300 million monthly active users, surpassing Twitter for the first time. The Instagram Stories feature, a direct rip-off of Snapchat, was introduced in August 2016 and surpassed the original just a year later. But even though Instagram has 2 billion monthly users, it faces a big problem: What will happen to the 18-to-29-year-olds who are most likely to use the app, even in America, as they get older, go to other places? Last year, The New York Times It said Instagram is concerned about attracting and retaining new young users to sustain its long-term growth—not to mention that growing traffic is catnip to marketers. TikTok is popular among American teenagers. Additionally, a series of algorithm changes — and some questionable attempts to copy features from other apps — have left many users frustrated. he stick to it.
In the summer, these animosities boil over. An update that promised, among other things, that the video content recommended by the algorithm will fill the entire screen is a bridge too far. Users were tired of watching the app turn into a TikTok copy that focused on video and ads that featured photos from friends. Even celebrities like Kylie Jenner and Chrissy Teigen spoke out.
“Make Instagram Instagram Again” read a graphic, created by photographer Tati Bruening, that Jenner shared on Instagram Stories and enjoyed more than 2 million users.
“It’s not like I suck at making videos,” Teigen said write on Twitter in a back-and-forth with Instagram head, Adam Mosseri. “That’s why I can’t see my friend’s posts and they can’t see my posts.”
Instagram eventually rolled back some of its controversial changes—those screen removals, for one—but what’s left to fuel the platform’s growth may not work. The contents were obtained from The Wall Street Journal show that Instagram users spend 17.6 million hours per day watching Reels, Instagram’s TikTok knockoff, compared to 197.8 million hours people spend watching TikTok per day. The documents also revealed that Reels’ installs have dropped by 13.6 percent in recent months, with most users reporting “no installs.” When contacted, a spokesperson for Instagram said that this report is about “a real-time photo shot from the episode.” They pointed to Meta’s earnings call, where CEO Mark Zuckerberg said Reels games have seen 50 percent growth over the past six months.
Instagram may not be on its deathbed, but its transformation from cool to boring is a sea change in the social-media world. The platform is perhaps the most important among the older generations of popular apps that hold the basic purpose of social media: to connect online with friends and family. Its decline is not about a loss of relevance, but a surrender to a new era of “useful” media, which we create online to reach people. don’t Know how to pay for the people we work with. The implications are even broader for Instagram’s most important by-product: influencers.
People have been finding ways to get paid for their content online since before the time of Instagram. But the app ushered in an aesthetic revolution, with pink background walls and flat photos, and the rise of a new content creator. Big brand deals, where the influencer promotes the brand’s product to their audience for a fee, have been known to cost anywhere from $100 to $10,000 per post, depending in the size of the followers and their activities. Now Tilghman, who became an Instagram influencer in 2015 and at one point had close to 400,000 followers, says he has seen his rate drop by 80 percent in the past five years. past The market is already busy.
Instead of Instagram, Tilghman turned to Substack, where he posted the Pet Hair paid ad on everything. He still posts on Instagram, but now mostly as a way to get his 246,000 followers back to his posts. Author Jessica DeFino, who joined Instagram in 2018 on the advice of publishers, began to retreat from the platform in 2020, frustrated by the constant reactions of her followers. followed. He’s set up an auto-responder to his Instagram DMs: If one of his 59,000 followers sends him a message, a request is made to DeFino via email.
Of course, these are bad times for many social media platforms. Facebook and Snap are struggling, not to mention Twitter. “Historically at least, all social media platforms are going to be outdated and outdated, but I hope that’s not the case,” Lewis said. “I don’t know that Instagram has what it takes … to keep it relevant at the moment, like email, but I think a Social media can take this away.”
Change is natural for social media platforms (just look at Tumblr). The weak image of Instagram is not the end of the app, but a re-evaluation of our relationship with it. According to LaTonya Yvette, a lifestyle blogger who has been on Instagram for almost 12 years, these changes are part of the deal, and the benefits of Instagram for her work over the past few years. in problems.
“I’ve been looking [Instagram] as an extension of my fiction,” he told me over email. “Because in the end it will be … a tool in the toolbox of art, society, politics or business, not the only way.”
DeFino’s social media audience was discovered by the editor. He predicts that he will return to his Instagram platform to promote his upcoming book this spring.
But will he be back on Instagram as a regular user? If he “creates a separate account, a personal account – somewhere I can limit my interactions with family and friends only,” he says. “Like Instagram in the beginning, I think.”
That’s if, at that point, Instagram’s algorithm-driven, command-driven, marketing-heavy interface delivers it. Ick.
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