When I first heard Instagram was taking away likes, my immediate reaction was one of indifference. My friends had to force me to get an Instagram the summer before our freshman year of college, so we could all keep up to date on one another’s lives. For me, it hasn’t been about how many likes I get but rather keeping up with my close friends and family and having a sort of catalog of my life. Despite being fairly unconcerned with how many likes I get on a picture, the comparison does get to even the least bothered of users, myself included.
It is hard not to associate your self worth with an app that is used to record your own life. When someone unfollows you or doesn’t like your picture, something so minuscule can become a hit to your self-esteem. Why don’t they like me? Did I do something to upset them? Do they not want to be my friend anymore? I think this is especially true for younger people of middle and high school age because their world revolves around comparison.
This is what Instagram hopes to try and avert, making the following statement on Twitter, “We want your friends to focus on the photos and videos you share, not how many likes they get”. This is what Instagram was originally made for, to be a photo-sharing app but now it feels as though it is has evolved into a whole other animal. Instagram is trying to combat this evolution. Which in the end could be beneficial for the mental health of all users through nullifying the comparison by numbers associated with likes. The ability to use the app without the obsessive nature of reaching a certain status as a user would make growing up in this technologically advanced age substantially easier for younger generations.
However, what may be beneficial for the mental health of all users may end up harming the wallets of some. It is known that Instagram has become a steady stream of income for social media influencers. This income is mostly generated by sponsored posts by brands that look for users that can amass a certain level of exposure for the service/product they are selling. The eventual elimination of likes would be bad news for influencers that rely on like-based sponsored content to support themselves financially. Followers have been proven to not be the most accurate representation of the regular traffic a page is getting, so likes are beneficial in determining brand choices and payment for an influencers service.
Personally, I think that Instagram should do away with numbers altogether: followers, likes, and story views. On the other hand, I understand the issue some users have with Instagram meddling with their source of income. I do not have a solution to that problem, but I do think the benefits all users will experience would outweigh the issues of a select few. We would all be better off if we lived our lives a little less plugged into technology and a little more plugged into the world around us.