Happy laughter, the most beautiful faces and bodies, the most loving couples, numerous activities, travels and adventures… the perfect life. This describes nowadays our Instagram feed and thus a social media app that we are “exposed” to every day. The problem here: this is not life. We’re not always super happy, head over heels in love, constantly traveling, and our faces don’t have soft focus. This begs the questions: what is Instagram actually doing to us? And what are we doing with Instagram? How do we deal with this social pressure of the super happy life, how do we present ourselves on such a platform, how much are we influenced by what we see there every day and how does it change us and thus society?
My personal motivation behind this is my environment and movements on Instagram like the hashtags #realinstagram #foremorerealityoninstagram, which make it clear that this problem of the supposedly social medium has already been recognized by many and attempts are being made to fight against it or to change the platform in a better direction.
On the basis of this social phenomenon, I would like to analyze how these dark patterns are implemented in design, what psychological design tools are used, and what effects this has. I would like to look at Instagram from two sides, the side of the dark patterns and the side of the opportunities and possibilities that this platform offers.
After a consideration from a phenomenological point of view, my vision is a media didactic work, which should aim at raising awareness of this topic, sensitizing society to it and especially at offering opportunities for the generations that are newly growing into the social media everyday life, or are thrown into it much more, to be able to deal with this format properly.
Literature
Instagram Accounts to Make Your Feed Less Toxic
Instagram use and mental health
