Instagram's Impact On Society

About 6 years ago, perhaps one of the most impactful events has occurred in social media history: the creation of Instagram. No matter how many times I had deleted countless Instagram accounts to stay away from it, I always came back to it, impulsively wanting to show my life through aesthetic photos just like every other teenager wanted. Instagram’s popularity continually increased throughout the years, from creating ways for people to share their lives, to promoting a new era of the selfie craze. People from across the world started to post on exciting events in their lives, and soon Instagram became a place for people to show only their best selves. With that, Instagram evolved into a platform for gaining attention and following what everyone …show more content…
Women on Instagram have a propensity to have a need to get attention by getting as many likes as possible on their selfies.They usually use certain poses that vividly displays the word “feminine” and “attractive” to appeal to their followers and appear as a “top post” on a hashtag. This popularity implicitly urges women to reveal a feminine aspect of themselves in order for them to participate in the enormous amount of fame that they desire. The way of obtaining this fame on Instagram can categorize women as submissive and dependent at the people around them, which is a major part of the gender stereotyping of females today. This also affects males in a similar fashion, where their selfies are expected to show a cluttered background and a lean body type since men are supposed to be seen as masculine and messy in societal terms. For men, however, taking selfies can be seen as self-conceited usually since the idea of selfies is most often used by women. Men who take selfies can be made fun of as too feminine by the audience, which leads to hate comments like “omg he looks so stupid” on their pictures and discouraging users to post whatever they feel regardless of whether or not they fit into society’s ideal images. The selfie craze has definitely burgeoned in the last couple of years on Instagram, but it has also strongly been a catalyst to the gender stereotypes that are surrounding us today. On the topic of advertisements, a study was created to show that men are more likely to follow or like pictures pertaining to energy drinks and sports, while women are more likely to follow accounts about cosmetics and fashion. This specific divide in the population of Instagram users is exactly the type of thing that pulls men and women apart as two very different populations. The line between