Research - The guardian 'why is it making people so miserable?'

Instagram is supposed to be friendly. So why is it making people so miserable?

Instagram came last, scoring particularly badly for its effects on sleep, body image and Fomo.

“On the face of it, Instagram can look very friendly,” says the RSPH’s Niamh McDade. “But that endless scrolling without much interaction doesn’t really lead to much of a positive impact on mental health and wellbeing. You also don’t really have control over what you’re seeing. And you quite often see images that claim to be showing you reality, yet aren’t. That’s especially damaging to young men and women.”

The risk of developing an unhealthy body image is often highlighted, but McDade emphasises that this is just one aspect. “Some people may be looking at feeds full of cars, and it’s giving them anxiety and depression as they can’t afford them.”

“The problem with Instagram is that you, almost exclusively, share content that is meant to reflect positively on yourself,” he says. “On Twitter or Facebook, you see much more content that isn’t, ‘Hey, look at my great life.’”

Rather than presenting users with a cross-section of what the people they were following were up to at any given moment, Instagram began populating feeds with the most noteworthy posts from those accounts, often reaching back days or even weeks to pull in particularly compelling content. In effect, the service began promoting a curated, unrealistic version of an already curated, unrealistic feed.

“The new algorithm creates a popularity contest between creators, so that they resort to unethical business decisions in order to keep themselves at the top of the food chain.” -victoria hui

Facebook, Instagram’s owner, warns against using its products in this way. “In general,” the company wrote on its corporate blog last year, “when people spend a lot of time passively consuming information – reading but not interacting with people – they report feeling worse afterward”.