Cora Crisafulli was in fourth grade when she sat down with her mom and asked if she could download Instagram. Her mom agreed, because, at the time, it was a place to post food photos, check out what your friends and family members were up to, and put cringy frames and filters over your pictures. There was little posting pressure, and influencers didn't yet exist.
But it's been nearly a decade since she and her mom had that conversation. And, in that time, Instagram stopped being a place for friends and family and started becoming a place for everything else. Comparison seeped in on the app, along with a flood of new content creators, around the time Crisafulli hit her mid-teens. First, she started following YouTubers, and then influencers, and then dancers. Soon, her entire feed was made up of comparisons — comparisons to the famous people she followed, or the highlight reels of her friends' lives.
"Even though I knew that a lot of it was fake and edited, you still compare yourself," Crisafulli, now an 18-year-old commercial dancer in Texas, told Mashable. "And not even just influencers also just to your friends and you compare your feed and how many likes everyone gets. Not that it matters to me now, but whenever you are 16 years old, I feel like that does really matter to you."
Facebook knows that Instagram can have detrimental effects on young women's mental health, according to an internal report obtained by the Wall Street Journal— but it appears the onus of changing that is being placed squarely on teen girls, instead of the company at large.
It can be tough sometimes for your mental health
Because Instagram only made changes to the app that put more pressure on young women to perform — like adding Stories and making the app virtually vital for young people to have — they've had to take matters into their own hands to safeguard their mental health. Crisafulli has gone through phases of fully deleting the app off of her phone.
"In the past, I've deleted it and just tried to step away because seeing like all the influencers, it can be tough sometimes for your mental health," Crisafulli said. She also stopped following specific people who made her feel bad about herself or set unrealistic standards and has tailored her feed to be a place that makes her feel a bit better than before.
"I started following a lot of influencers that are more body positivity and showing their real life and what's fake versus reality. And I started following influencers that helped my mental health rather than following people that made me hate myself. So I think that's first," Crisafulli said. "And then I started unfollowing the people that didn't make me feel good and honestly, just not scrolling on as much and just having that time off [the app]. And then whenever I downloaded it again, it was a lot easier to just have a better relationship with it."
Now, Crisafulli only posts on her feed about once a year because, honestly, posting is stressful. Gabby Rudolph, an 18-year-old student at Arizona State University, echoed Crisafulli's feelings on the stress, saying her account is always private and she only uploads occasionally.
[Instagram] gives me anxiety when I go to post
"[Instagram] gives me anxiety when I go to post," Rudolph said. "I never really post just because it's too much. Whereas on Snapchat, you can just post a selfie and it's whatever, it's just Snapchat."
It's not surprising that online communities can be bad. As Rebecca Jenning's pointed out in Vox's The Goods, when you put a bunch of strangers in the same place, the most extreme voices will be the loudest, floating to the top of the conversation. The companies that own these platforms should undoubtedly be the ones to fix the problems — but doesn't seem like they're trying.
Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram, said in an interview on the Recode Media podcast following the release of a series of damning Wall Street Journalarticles that social media is like cars — some people will get hurt and that's just the name of the game.
"We know that more people die than would otherwise because of car accidents, but by and large cars create way more value in the world than they destroy," Mosseri said. "And I think social media is similar."
Adam Mosseri and Monica Mosseri at the 2021 Met Gala setting unrealistic standards for teen girls everywhere.Credit: Taylor Hill/WireImageRudolph and Crisafulli tend to agree, largely, that all social media can be harmful, not just Instagram. But, even if that is true, that shouldn't mean Instagram is simply off the hook for hurting its users.
"There are so many bad things that come with [Instagram], but, then again, that goes along with every single app and anything online," Rudolph said. "It should be on the people at Instagram to solve this problem, but it's also just life on the internet."
Crisafulli said she feels similar anxieties about posting on other apps, like Snapchat and TikTok, too. But Snapchat often feels more like a low-pressure group chat, and TikTok is more of a place for creative scrolling, so it doesn't add up to the same comparison problems for her.
A slide from one 2019 Facebook presentation, obtained by the Wall Street Journal,read "Teens blame Instagram for increases in the rate of anxiety and depression." Internal researchers found that Instagram made body image issues worse for one in three girls and that more than 40 percent of Instagram users said they felt more "unattractive" once they began while using the app. And even though social comparison takes place all over the internet, this research was specific to Instagram — not social media as a whole.
"I think it's because everyone on Instagram, everyone can see the like and the comments and they can screenshot and they can forward it," Rudolph said. "Whereas on Snapchat, it just feels more like one-on-one."
Despite saying most internet communities don't make them feel particularly great, both Crisafulli and Rudolph said they didn't feel the same kind of anxiety around posting on Snapchat, or the same comparison while swiping through the TikTok For You page or messaging on Snapchat.
One of the reasons, Rudolph says, might be because even though Instagram has given users an option to hide likes, it hasn't given all users the option to not see comments on others' posts, or hide all comments on their own posts — something she thinks inarguably ignites more comparisons.
Every app and everything you do online can be toxic if you let it be.
"To me, like the number of likes I've gotten has never been a big deal: I want all the comments complimenting me," Rudolph laughed. "I think for everyone it's different. Every app and everything you do online can be toxic if you let it be."
Rudolph says she doesn't know what Instagram can do to combat that toxicity, and neither does Crisafulli — but should it be their job to manage the effect of a multi-billion-dollar tech company?
Crisafulli says it's frustrating that the job of making the internet a better place is put upon the very young women whose emotional stability it's ravaging. She says young women and teens on the platform could do what she did: Delete the app for a while, unfollow anyone who makes them feel bad about themselves, start following people that make you feel good, and, of course, remind yourself that this nothing you see online is a full picture.
"Everyone has their ups and downs and you're only seeing their ups," Crisafulli said. "I am glad that I finally come to that realization because now it doesn't really affect me because I know the truth, you know?"
TopicsInstagramMental Health
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