I am a 2000s baby. What does that infer? Oh yeah. Likes. We love nothing more than a ratio of likes on Instagram to our followers. We check. Constantly. Due to the rapid growth of our century, we had no choice but to react to our environment. It is sad, yet predominantly still present in my generation. Checking likes gets in the way of our daily lives because it distracts us from more important things and events that go on.
It all started during my middle school years. Instagram was popping. It was the new shoes on the street, a popular hairdo or the snazzy place to go out with friends. A filter existed. We obsessed over which filter to use. The stress over how many people saw it but didn’t like the post weighed on the back of our shoulders. Still to this day, it has remained that way.
If we didn’t get enough likes we didn’t feel cool enough to fit into society. As a result, not only did we have the stress of school, but we also had the strain of having an Instagram. Since we are younger, we are more sensitive to the public opinion.
Since Instagram was launched in 2010 and has been prominent for almost ten years. The rapid change of the app has shown that it has affected the daily lives of my age group. According to Statista, 71 percent of Americans aged 18 to 24 use Instagram. The usage of this app has grown exponentially and has remained popular amongst the age population that I categorize myself in.
High school was a stage in my life when there were a lot of “cliques”. Once you fit into a group, it was who you always went out with, posted pictures with and shared conversations with. The focus of likes is always on our mind because when someone views your profile it is one of the first things they notice.
It has been proven by the blog Brandwatch that Instagram clocks up to 4.2 billion likes every day. We have come to normalize the way we deal with social media and how it mentally affects us. There’s no telling on forcing people to worry less about the likes they get. However, there is a certain point where it influences your personal life.
Personally, once I post something on Instagram, I tend to avoid the app for a couple of hours, so I am not obsessing over the views, likes and comments. By doing this, it will remove stress concerning the amount of likes that you get the minute you post something. Trust me, it might be hard to do but it helps you in the long run!