By Bella Leonard '21
Many fellow high schoolers turn to the popular social media platform, Instagram, for their daily needs. Many use the site to gather information about the current news, others use it to look for memes, and some use it to stalk their ex and their new significant other. No matter your reason for tuning to Instagram, it is safe to say a majority of teens go on that app at least once a day. Over the summer, Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom announced that in Australia he would block accounts from viewing likes, and would slowly roll out that update across the Insta-crazy world. I follow an influencer that lives in Australia, you can roll your eyes but she has good content, so I was already aware of the update. However I was not prepared at how soon it would approach US. Earlier this week a meme page I have loyally been following frantically posted how Instagram would be hiding likes in the US now. My initial reaction with this was that Instagram would be hiding me from ALL likes, my friends as well as my own. Now on November 14, 2019 I have realized that is simply not true. I cannot view how many likes my friends have, but I can view how many likes I have. Personally, I would be fine with getting rid of likes if that meant I would not be able to see who liked my most recent posts, however the fact that only I can see my likes is rather annoying. Hiding likes is why many people are on VSCO now; does this mean Instagram might lose their grip of their #1 spot of social media and join the world of Facebook and MySpace? Personally, I would be for Instagram hiding their likes if that meant I was unable to see my likes as well, but the fact I can still see who liked my posts almost defeats the purpose. I do believe that the world of social media has a toxic side, many people, myself included, judge their success by the status of their most recent post on Instagram. However, if Instagram really wants to fix that problem, they might as well get rid of likes all together.
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