Earlier this week, a Canadian study revealed the dangers ofexcessive use of social media on the Mental Health teenagers. Findings that Instagram seems to have already heard about. The platform, very popular with young people, made an announcement on Wednesday July 17 that did not delight all of its users: in six countries (Australia, Italy, Ireland, Japan, Brazil and New Zealand), the latter will no longer be able to see how many “likes” their photos have collected.
No date has yet been communicated on the end of this experiment, already tested in May in Canada. However, the function is not completely eliminated. The number of “likes” will always be accessible to people who share content, but by clicking on a different page. “We are doing this experiment because we want our users to focus on the photos and videos shared, not the number of likes they collect., explains one of the spokespersons of the American giant to Time. We don’t want Instagram to look like it’s in a competition. “
We’re looking forward to learning more about how this change might benefit everyone’s experience on Instagram.
– Instagram (@instagram) July 17, 2019
Notifications, this addiction
With this approach, Instagram claims to want to reduce the Internet user stress. In 2017, a study by the Royal Society for Public Health ranked the platform as the worst network for young British mental health. In the United States, 72% of teens nationwide would use it, according to research conducted by the Pew Research Center in 2018. Almost 40% of them only published content likely to generate “likes” or comments.
Ofother surveys have also shown that receiving notifications, such as those of a “like”, triggers the production of dopamine, “pleasure hormone”. It is this phenomenon which is responsible for the creation of a social media addiction.
The race for red hearts
In addition, people do not hesitate to put themselves in extreme situations to inflate the scores of their photos, increasing the number of accidents. Others maintain theobsession with ever thinner bodies, through worrying challenges (ribcage-bragging, toblerone tunnel, abcrack). Trends that “frequently expose adolescents to images of other better-off young people, such as those with ‘perfect’ bodies”, noted the Canadian study published Monday. And who, at the same time, increase their depressed state, their feeling of worthlessness and the recurrence of morbid thoughts.
Thus, this Instagram maneuver could encourage users to photograph according to their tastes, and not the number of likes they could generate. The platform managed by Facebook, however, did not indicate whether the device will be extended to new countries, such as France.
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