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Colin Maher
Professor DerOhanessian
English 115
29 October 2014
Instagram, More Than Just Pictures
What started as a great way to share photos and experiences with your friends and family
has quickly evolved into meaningless posts that are only there to show others that you are
actually doing something with your life. The concept of Instagram was actually very clever and
creative. Posting pictures on other social media is what some people like the most so to have a
whole separate app that only focuses on pictures caught the attention of many people around the
world. The use of Instagram has changed social interaction , caused intrusive behavior, and
reflects the negative change in how society behaves socially throughout the years.
Instagram started as a fun way to to share your life with other people as they share theirs
with you, however it has quickly evolved into showing a more enhanced and almost false way of
sharing your life. The bulk of society feels the need to share what they are doing to the rest of the
world for some sort of confidence enhancer that they have a life. This concept is shown through
the feed of many users who post photos multiple times per day everyday of the week. Due to this
constant need to post, it turns Instagram from a fun way to show meaningful events in ones life
to posting pictures that give a more enhanced version of what a person is doing just so they can
feel better about the life they are living. Look at image 3 for example, it shows two photos of the
user Kamren Schendel. His constant need to post is shown here when he posts the same picture
of himself twice within two months of each other. That means that he actukally went back

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through his photos and found the selfie that he posted months ago and decided to post it again
because in his mind it was a good photo of himself and he wanted to make sure people could see.
People like to use a picture to make their life better than it might actually be by making every
picture they post extravagant so as to portray that they lead a fantastic life all of the time. Since
Instagram has evolved it has helped take away from real social interaction. Instead of telling
someone in person what you have done or what they have done, you just post it and wait for
them to post something about their life. It also has changed the way people meet. It used to be a
face to face interaction but now with social media including Instagram, people just follow other
people hoping that they may be able to talk to them through direct message. The standard has
been set to this sort of indirect relationship and it is sad that people think that this is the only way
to get to know somebody. People also feel that they are even close with the people that they only
talk to through social media when in reality the person that they know and trust through posts
and direct messages could be a completely different person when it comes to the real world.
However while sad, this has become the new way of making new friends and meeting new
people.
Instagram has contributed to the attitudes of many people in current society by causing a
constant need to see what their peers are doing. It has caused a very intrusive way of thinking
throughout its users. Many people will use Intstagram to learn more about a person they do not
really know. They do this by scrolling through their personal page which contains all of the
photos that person has ever posted. The images can reflect on the persons life and give a general
idea of what kind of person they are. While this may be true by the fact that it can give a general
idea, people in today's society will take only a users profile to get to know a person and forget to

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actually meet them or get to know them face to face. Image 4 shows the user Colin Maher,
myself. In my profile you will find my hobbies and what I like to do but it will tell you nothing
of my personality or how I am as a person. The users that need to see others' post shows a more
intrusive society than in previous years. This is because it is far easier to find out about someone
than it used to be. The ease of looking up a persons profile takes away the drive of getting to
know someone in person and makes us lazy and unwilling to actually socialize with others
without a screen. People figure they can just talk to people through Instagram or just view what
that person is posting. They believe that to be good enough to actually know who a person is and
what they are like as a person.
Society's reaction to Instagram has changed how it functions. Human interaction used to
be more face to face, but has now evolved into an electronic world full of reading and tapping
screens. Instagram has been able to help capture a moment and release it to others to see in an
efficient way but also contribute to the loss in real social interaction. Some might argue that there
is actually more social interaction with the use of Instagram, and they may be correct only in that
people are aware of more people. Does a user on Instagram really know all of their followers on
a personal level? Maybe some, but definitely not all. The new need for people to achieve a high
amount of followers really says something about how Instagram is affecting the public as a
whole. Some how the idea of having thousands of followers viewing your posts on a daily basis
has become a new source of confidence for people and can make them feel better about
themselves. But does having thousands of followers really make you better than other users?
Image 1 demonstrates the need for followers. Michelle Fursmen is the girl who owns the
account. For some reason she felt the need to acquire thousands of followers without becoming

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famous in any way. She does not know 26 thousand people and in fact took over the account
from a friend to use as her own. Not to mention that her friend Liz is also not famous and
acquired the followers through an app. Michell chose to take over the account rather than create
a new one from scratch because this account has more followers and that would put her on top of
the instagram world. This shows how Instagram can influence how we think or how we want to
view ourselves. The need for attention is brought out by using Instagram as a way to promote
themselves and achieve recognition (Tsikerdekis and Zeadally 4). Instagram just allows users to
find out about more people. This helps contribute to the laziness of getting to know people. The
users false sense of knowing people makes him/her less willing to try and make knew friends in
the real world.
When people post on instagram it is very easy to give a false image of yourself to show to
others. People often want to be viewed as better off than they are and by posting the right
pictures on their profile they can achieve a sort of deception. This is because, Nature often
favors deception as a mechanism for gaining a strategic advantage in all kinds of biological
relationships (Tsikerdekis, Zeadally). The need to be ahead of peers can influence highly what
is being posted on a profile. People can easily, with the use of pictures, make a much more
interesting life on their profile by posting images that suggest more than they really are. There
are also the people who can deceive by changing themselves completely with false profiles and
fake names. One way to show this is by searching for Justin Bieber's Instagram. There are so
many users that claim they are the real Justin Bieber, and it is because it is so easy to just say you
are another person through social media. The people who do create false accounts and identity
can now create a new person completely and behave in a different social manner because they

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will not have to ever face any sort of consequence. Social Media such as Instagram, provide an
environment in which assessment signals are neither required not the norm, making deception
easy; for instance, gender switching online may require only a name change (Tsikerdekis,
Zeadally). When people are able to change almost every aspect of themselves it makes it easier
to act out in bold manner because no one knows that the profile belongs to you.
Some people may argue that Instagram is a good way to meet people and that by
following them you will be able to get to know them better. This idea sounds good in theory,
however when you follow a person on Instagram you really do not talk to them at all. You just
have to wait and see what to post, then try to interpret from the image how the person is in real
life. As I previously stated trying to do that can result in a false sense of knowing a person and
does not really work efficiently.
Instagram has offered a lot to society in both positive and negative ways. More recently it
has offered a change in the way society behaves socially. Without the constant posting of pictures
for the world to see society might behave differently than it does now. Image 2 describes the
amount of posts that some people are able and willing to do. Instagram has completely changed
social interaction by making members of society alter their behavior through images that they
post and they are able to create a new identity for themselves. It has also created a more intrsive
lifestyle that leaves people constantly wondering about what other people are doing with their
lives and if they are at the same level as their peers. The use of the app has changed how society
has changed how it behaves throughout the years by slowly evolving from face-to-face
encounters to relying on posts to learn about a person or even just talk to them. It has had a
bigger impact on society than most people realize and it will forever leave its footprint on how

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we behave for the years to come.

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Works cited
Dhar, Joydip, Analyzing social Media Engagement And Its Effects Online Product Purchase
Decision Behavior. Journal Of Human behavior In Social Environment 24.5 (2014): 791-798.
Acedemic Search Premier. Web. 26 Oct. 2014

Tsikerdekis, Michail, and Sherali Zeadally. Online Deception In Social Media.

Communications Of The ACM 57.9 (2014): 72-80. Academic Search Premier. Web 25 Oct. 2014
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