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Top: Sophomore Tess Korte poses with friends. This picture represents the types of pictures Korte used to post.

Anxious adolescents try Instagram’s new settings addressing mental health, safety

By Adanna Mbanu, Staff

Hovering for too long over the share button. Overthinking each post. Constantly checking for likes. Deleting posts that don’t get enough likes. Tess Korte, sophomore, struggled with the pressures of posting pictures for the public eye. The constant stress that Instagram caused Korte led her to make the ultimate decision to delete the app in April 2020. A weight was lifted from her shoulders. Social media platforms have long been questioned for being harmful to mental health. In a recent 2021 report, U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy addressed the affects: “Young people are bombarded with messages through the media and popular culture that erode their sense of self-worth— telling them they are not good looking enough, popular enough, smart enough, or rich enough,” Murthy said. Instagram’s agenda has recently been called into question for damaging adolescents’ image of themselves. A former Facebook product manager, France Haugen, told Congress in October that Facebook’s products (Instagram is owned by Meta, formerly Facebook), harm adolescents and the company has been hiding research that shows the app harms teens’ body image and mental health. In response to criticism, Instagram released new features in 2021 targeting teen users, including the option to turn off comments and likes for specific posts and reminders to take a break from the app. Sophomore Hannah Patel, who has over 3,000 followers on Instagram, took advantage of these new features by turning off the like count for her most recent pictures. “It’s good that they added that you can hide [likes] because I know a lot of people can compare and be like, ‘Oh no, she’s getting more likes than me,’” Patel said. According to head of Instagram Adam Mosseri in a blog post announcing the changes, Instagram’s goal with the added features was to make users feel more comfortable in their own profile when posting. “We know that as teens grow up, they want more control over how they show up both online and offline,” Mosseri said. “So, for the first time, they will be able to bulk delete content they’ve posted like photos and videos, as well as their previous likes and comments. While available to everyone, I think this tool is particularly important for teens to more fully understand what information they’ve shared on Instagram, what is visible to others, and to have an easier way to manage their digital footprint.” These changes are a result of pressure on the company from Congress to address teen mental health and safety on the app. “I definitely think social media affects my mental health because I had to perfect it in order to post it, which is so much

extra work,” Patel said. “Why would I do that if I’m supposed to be [posting] for myself? The pressure of everyone posting, that makes me want to post, too.” The pressure of posting a picture, especially towards a large following, is intimidating and can lead to even more self-consciousness. “I definitely do not know all of the people [who follow me],” Patel said. “It’s kind of weird to me that I don’t know all the people that see my pictures.” Sophomore Nash Wagner, who’s just recently committed to Alabama University for baseball and has over 3,000 followers on Instagram, feels pressured when posting because of his large following. “I have a lot of people watching me, so I have to be careful with everything I do,” Wagner said. “But I’ve learned to work with it.” Korte first decided to remove followers from her account. She initially had around 300 followers but decided to remove almost half of them. “I really just want my Instagram to be people I know and my friends,” Korte said. “It just felt unnecessary to have people I don’t care about. The more people you have [following you] that you don’t care about or don’t know, the more stressed out you’re going to be. You’re going to feel like people are judging you. When it’s mostly my friends and family, I feel less judged.” Korte eventually deleted the Instagram app because “it was getting to the point where it was less fun” and she was “more stressed out and attached to it,” Korte said. This trend of completely deleting social media apps became more popular during the quarantine of 2020, which is when Korte decided to rethink and delete the app. Not only are the expectations of posting perfect pictures especially stressful to teens, but the unconscious comparisons that are made on Instagram are equally troublesome. “It’s probably not good for my mental health and everyone else’s because you’re constantly looking at what other people are doing and comparing yourself with other people,” Patel said. For Korte, this comparison coincided with feelings of exclusion. “I constantly felt like I was missing stuff,” Korte said. “Not being able to see [everything] really helped me because I was more focused on actually spending time with people and spending time with my family.” In December, Instagram also announced new settings to allow the user to set up daily time limits and “Take a Break” notifications if the user is on the app for too long at one time. Users can enable the notification to pop up after 10, 20, or 30 minutes on the app. “To make sure that teens are aware of this feature, we’ll show them notifications suggesting they turn these reminders on,” Mosseri said. “We’re encouraged to see that teens are using Take A Break. Early test results show that once teens set the reminders, more than 90% of them keep them on.” Utilizing the new features has freed some teens from added stress. “Now I’m posting stuff that I like and spending less time worrying about something that didn’t get as many likes that I wanted,” Korte said. Being able to turn off comments, in particular, helped Korte reduce time on the app. “It feels unnecessarily stressful to respond to [comments] when it’s your friends,” Korte - BONNIE said. “And you know that they think those things anyway, and they’ll tell you that in real life. You don’t need to see it on social media. ENGLAND, It almost feels like it’s for other people more than for you. When I post now, I feel less school stressed about what people are going to say. And I don’t feel like I’m going to have to social worker spend forever coming up with new replies to each comment that’s exactly the same.” According to Mosseri, these features aim to give users more control over their experience as well as create a safer space for teens. Enabling these new settings might help teens struggling with their relationship with Instagram. But for those for whom social media apps continue to cause stress or a negative self image, Wagner has a reminder. “Don’t get caught up in Instagram all that much,” Wagner said. “It doesn’t really mean anything in the grand scheme of things.” “Instagram gives an often false reality of someone’s image and their life. It leads to comparison to others and not feeling good enough. It plays on our natural, hardwired desire for acceptance and belonging, which is especially strong as a teen.” Questions to help guide your technology use: (from “Protecting Youth Mental Health” U.S. Surgeon General’s Advisory)