A recent article from Slate names Instagram as the most depressing major social network around.
Writer Jessica Winter claims that the photo-sharing site further accentuates the most depressing aspects of Facebook, such as the unsatisfied feeling you get when looking at someone’s pictures of exciting activities and accomplishments.
Winter writes that this reaction creates feelings of jealousy and may even cause the subject to cross the “grey line of stalkerism.”
The writer’s claims are supported by communications and psychology professors who have published studies on the mental and emotional effects of constantly going on Facebook.
According to the piece, the first reason Winter cites for Instagram causing depression is the “purification” of the three worst parts of Facebook that often ignite intense envy and hatred.
She lists scrolling through photos of people we want to emulate, seeking approval of our lives in the form of “likes” and, of course, broadcasting how satisfying our lives are with our own photographs and statuses.
Winter then notes that Instagram provides the easiest way for us to show off since it revolves purely around pictures.
Hanna Krasnova of Humboldt University Berlin told Winter:
“You get more explicit and implicit cues of people being happy, rich, and successful from a photo than from a status update. If you see beautiful photos of your friend on Instagram,one way to compensate is to self-present with even better photos, and then your friend sees your photos and posts even better photos, and so on.” “Self-promotion triggers more self-promotion, and the world on social media gets further and further from reality.”
But Winter reminds us that viewers also don’t know what’s happening outside of the image we see. A couple on vacation could be posting beautiful pictures of themselves and the scenery while they are secretly at each other’s throats the whole time.
Winter believes that Instagram provides not a truthful, but a distorted view of a user’s world, which as a result alters the viewer’s opinion of his or her own life. This makes us feel unfulfilled, uninformed and depressed.
And as well as making us feel depressed, Winter says, Instagram also solicits a creepier form of stalkerism. She uses the example of an interesting article being posted on Facebook compared to a photo of a couple on their honeymoon being uploaded to Instagram.
Winter explains that it’s easy not to seem intrusive when initiating a conversation with the person who posted the article. Telling an acquaintance that you’ve been looking through recently posted honeymoon photos, however, is awkward as hell, even if the photos were shared publicly.
Via: Daily Mail, Photo Courtesy: Tumblr
