With over 600 million active users, Instagram is piercing into our daily lives more and more as we speak. The number of lives documented online is growing, and the number of likes that ensue remain the scaffolding to the network, categorising each photo into the echelons of the virtual world. If you are an active ‘Instagrammer’, I’m sure you cannot deny the sense of elevation instigated by seeing the [❤30] appear on your notifications, or by browsing the abundance of flattering filter settings that enable you to turn your memory into a whitagrammed chef d’oeuvre.

Each part of our life can be framed through the perspective of social media. A night out now ceremoniously involves the ‘selfie’ round, a signified occasion of the getting-ready-schedule, inevitably trailed by the discussion of when ‘prime insta-time’ is, because exceeding your personal best in ‘likes’ is of utmost importance. However, these photos can be taken out of context; even if you had an utter calamity of a night, the Instagram you posted with 150 likes embellishes any tragic fiascos and adorns your virtual image. Any taint in your real life can be bandaged by the façade of your Instagram icon.

But when did Instagram, a medium on which we share our memories, become a struggle for self-approval and a manifestation of an idealistic image? There is evidently another side to Instagram, a side which isn’t spoken about nearly enough.

"As a teenager, the cybernetic penetration of the ideal-self is overwhelming, and risks provoking long-term effects in young minds"

There is undoubtedly a health infatuation which is continuously reposted onto our feeds, ricocheting into our insecurities. The ‘thinspo’ and ‘clean eating’ that saturate our newsfeeds emboss an ideal figure of beauty to which we clearly must aspire. The eternal rhetoric surrounding the perfect abs, thigh gap, or cheek bones lead us to constant scrutiny of our own natural bodies.

Likewise, the clean-eating fad that constitutes aesthetically beautiful and organic diet (that is almost impossible to maintain) can make you abnormally apprehensive about your own habits. In no way am I saying the promotion of a healthy lifestyle is a bad thing, but the constant bombardment of avocado and lentils intertwined with desperately slim figures can reverberate in your mind; the popularity and the likes ensued from these images pulsates into a mentality that to be liked, you must adhere to this ideal.

This established ideal seeps into your own, real life. The perpetual exposure to air-brushed models who root their posts in squats and diets institutes certain rubrics on the way we must lead our lives. It tarnishes the whole purpose of Instagram: the sharing of our memories transforms into the scrutinising of others; this constant self-comparison evoked by the increasing obsession with approval (or ‘likes’) collapses our own self-esteem and perverts our perception of our own bodies.

This self-distortion is exceptionally detrimental to your mental health, and as more and more teens become exposed to every corner of Instagram, the increasing damage to mental health is incalculable. In the UK, statistics show that the average age at which young girls develop eating disorders is 16-17, for young boys it is as low as 13. As a teenager, the cybernetic penetration of the ideal-self is overwhelming, and risks provoking long-term effects in young minds.

Duelling with the double-edged sword: Clean eating and food porn

It is not just the health craze which is uprooting our self-acuity. The excess of make-up tutorials are permeating daily life to the extent where girls as young as 13 feel the desire, and need, to go to school adorned with false eyelashes and a flawless contour. It raises the question of whether these tutorials, like the health fixation, have founded a norm to which we must adhere. Particularly for women, the pressure of maintaining one’s appearance is a long-standing concern. Yet, for people to be enmeshed in this constant quest for the ideal, the pressure, and power, of Instagram is worrying.

Instead of ingraining pride in what you have, Instagram flaunts what you lack. It leads you to create an online persona centralised on getting ‘likes’, ‘likes’ which pulse constant threads of approval through your Instagram feed, ranking your ‘whitagrammed chef d’oeuvres’ as though ranking your actual person. 

Maybe the desire to share our lives has transformed into the desire to live another. But we mustn’t let the likes personify us