I have said for a while now that social media is so harmful to our mental states and our way of living. Social media isn’t always as honest as it seems and it’s fascinating to speak to people who work with the platform to see how effected they are by it, but also how so often they see it as them doing nothing wrong.

Instagram is a massive social media that gained prevalence through influencers that want to show off their luxury lifestyles of money and fame and happiness that isn’t always as it seems. We speak to one influencer in the documentary who talks about having an eating disorder and how, even though she was massively underweight, she still edited her pictures to be thinner because she never saw herself as good enough, and how much of a struggle it was to get out of that mindset to then become fully happy with herself. We also meet another influencer who had a Brazilian butt lift and the complexities that came with that, which is also the leading cause of death in cosmetic surgery, as well as the people who actually work at Instagram and how they see the change from Instagram’s core values to being bought by Facebook and everything else that comes along with it, and how detrimental that can be to people’s mental health.

I think it’s terrifying in this day and age that no matter what you do in life you never feel good enough, there’s always someone who’s got something better than you, more than you, and it’s so easy to compare yourself to them. But what are we supposed to do about it? How are the social medias meant to deal with it unless they completely shut down? They say in the show that the people who work there have been trying to remove harmful accounts and images and hashtags etc. but there’s only so much one person can do when they’re fighting against millions of users who are constantly uploading and creating a stream of hatred, bullying and harassment.

Of course Instagram and Facebook have to take account of what they’re doing and what people are using their platform for, but it’s very obvious that when you only have a set number of people who are able to combat it and then you try and use AI and technology that doesn’t understand it on a human level it’s never going to work. I think young people need to be educated more on what the social medias really are and how fake they are and how they shouldn’t compare themselves to these people, because it can create a lifetime of issues that they could never recover from.

I do believe that people under the age of 16 shouldn’t have access to social media because, not only could they be groomed by strangers online, but they will also find unrealistic standards of what they should be like when they’re still developing. It’s a horrifying thing to be a teenage girl in this time of life where everything is online and exposed, and in my eyes I don’t think it should be allowed, but unfortunately social media is easily accessible and there’s nothing we can do about it.

What do you think of Instagram? Is it a harmless social media site or does it have darker implications?

Until next time.

Published by shonaharding

Media graduate with a passion for reviewing film and TV. View all posts by shonaharding