Is Instagram the “Mean Girl” of Social Media?

When I was in grade school, I was geeky and gawky. Overweight and mousey — and the butt of many jokes for my female classmates. The only way I was popular was that I was an easy target to mock and mortify. I was receiving the same at home and told every day I was fat and ugly and no one would ever love me.

As I grew up, I learned to give attitude and fein some kind of self-esteem. I had good friends in high school, dated and developed long-lasting relationships in college. I still had that voice in my head telling me I was fat and ugly and no one would ever love me. But I managed the anxiety and later learned how to create boundaries when it came to my self-esteem and anyone who created negativity.

I became more confident in myself and realized that being popular wasn’t a necessary thing in adulthood. I had close friendships but never ran with a crowd. And that was okay! I was satisfied with my own definition of being a part of society.

That is, until social media became a norm.

Facebook wasn’t an issue for me — I had control of who I accepted as my “friends” and felt no pressure to accept requests. It wasn’t until I entered the Instagram world that I started to feel the old twinges of being the unpopular kid.

But I thought people liked me?

I was first introduced to Instagram when I owned my brick and mortar women’s clothing boutique. It seemed like an easy app to use — post a photo of mannequins or lay downs from the shop with cute little captions and info on how to purchase the looks. My sales manager and I started from the ground up, building a following as we figured out what our customers wanted to see. We were getting comments on how cute the outfits were and questions if we could hold a size for a customer who would stop off that night to pick it up. It brought in some business and it was fun to create the posts.

When I closed my shop, I knew I had to create a new account for my personal styling business. I would need to build a new following (hoping many from my shop account would follow this new business) and start fresh with ideas on how to get clients through this and other social apps.

Little did I know the pressures that came with being “popular” on a social media platform hellbent on forcing you into playing its algorithm party games.

Too many tags, not enough posts…

It seemed there was no rhyme or reason to getting seen on the app. I’d read the “Get more followers…” articles on various sites that claimed to understand how the game was played. Or the “see more engagement…” posts that always mentioned that the algorithm had changed AGAIN.

“Join this engagement group…”
“Buy followers…”
“Use this app…”

Pressure built while I read that I couldn’t use special features until I reached a certain amount of followers. The analytics on my business page would show insane inconsistencies and I’d be constantly checking how many people liked my post.

It became intolerable at times — I thought, “I KILLED it with this post!” And that very same post would see half as many eyes as the two posts before. The disappointment and frustration only got worse when I found opportunities to monetize my account. I started working with “brands” that were really only trying to fool people into buying their cheap products and didn’t even care if you posted a shout out to them. I learned my lesson the hard way — and was told that valid brands wouldn’t ask me to buy their stuff.

When quarantine started, I came up with a style challenge — how to use your own wardrobe to make new outfits while we were all in isolation. But I was using the same hashtag over and over — and I guess Instagram doesn’t like that. So they dropped my audience even lower, leaving me unable to figure out how to get new eyes on my content.

I posted once a day — because you’re “supposed” to keep content fresh — but never getting a fresh set of eyes on it. I added videos — because Instagram likes to see you using different media. But they didn’t like to show me to different users.

Use location hashtags — but not too many and not the same ones…
Use hashtags in your stories — but hide them from viewers…
You need more followers to do what you want to do….

And that old feeling of being unpopular crept into my head.

On Wednesdays we show you less!

Is Instagram the new “Mean Girl?” I may not be a psychologist, but I know when something is bad for my emotional health. And I’m not the only one that feels like they are on that popularity rollercoaster all over again. Like suddenly my photos have black glasses and buck teeth drawn over them like some yearbook bully’s joke.

I skim through the photos that receive the most engagement and notice all too many times that the women with all the followers look eerily alike and have the same comments over and over — “You are so beautiful…” “You look amazing…” “🔥🔥🔥.”

I notice that almost every photo has some sort of filter — whether it’s that light pink hazy one or that the woman’s torso is incredibly stretched. If this is bringing up body issues for a 45-year-old single mother of teenage boys, what is it doing to our kids? Is this what they strive to be?

I felt targeted by the Mean Girl — she was making my life so hard when all I was looking to do was reach the right people who want to see my content. She was blocking me from making friends!

A new set of Boundaries

After months of ongoing frustration and trying to find some way to make money as an “influencer,” I had to say ENOUGH. My therapist was worried about the impact the site was having on my self-esteem and suggested I limit my time on it. And, yet again, Instagram changed its ridiculous algorithm, making it even harder on business pages to be seen.

So I went back to a personal account. This way I couldn’t punish myself by constantly looking at the erratic statistics on how many followers saw my post as opposed to how many the site would show that weren’t following me. No more desperately searching to see if it gifted me with showing up on the Discover page. No more checking how many watched my stories.

I want to say I’ve purged myself of the burden of this popularity contest. But my work NEEDS social media to get business. If not Instagram, then Facebook, or Twitter or Pinterest. All with algorithms designed to make you pay them for views. And in this new form of social culture — a pandemic causing the world to stay away from each other — it’s even more important.

So how do we keep our sanity when a computer runs whether or not we can be successful without feeding it’s ego (advertising)? I’ve decided to not give the site too much of what it wants — attention. Will I suffer from lack of business? Maybe. Will I save myself from needless self-doubt? Hopefully.