“The desire for a ‘hit’ of dopamine, coupled with a failure to gain instant indulgence, may prompt users to perpetually refresh their social media feeds”.
#Instagram and the #quicksand colloidal effect of pictures on #emotional health.
As every other social media platform, Instagram is marketed as a free choice. Moreover, a free choice that gives “Opportunities to create, connect, communicate, discover, and share; Fostering a positive, inclusive, and safe environment” as specifies in their policy. Also, they provide users with privacy, and access to complains and spasm reporting.
From another point, Instagram is product of Facebook that is determined to create a cybersafe with its own governance. Eventually, they have created a platform that is purely devoted to utilizing a human natural trait of the brain and its emotional dependence. The brain is designed to be affected by images more than words and audios. The psychological impact of pictures triggers emotional depth, and specifically prior to sleep. Specialists specified the impact of the last 10 pictures that are stored in mind prior to sleep, will multiply during sleep and creates a drive of stimulations that will direct action after waking up.
Furthermore, the platform reads, stores, sorts out and systemizes the “likes”, search history and profile clicks. Accordingly, the user, who slept under the influence of the last 10 images, will wake up to find a set of suggested pictures that enforces what has been multiplied through the night. This person will become determined to what the images emphasized. Another criterion that Instagram suggests images, is based on the search history of friends followed by the account user, and interactions between these followers / followed accounts, on Instagram and Facebook.
This process is ongoing and will occur even if the search history is deleted and is no longer visible to the user. The process is also indulged in millions of robotic accounts, that will CommNet on automated suggested images with a wording system that instill the connection between the viewer and the systemized themes of these images. Total containment of one’s brain. And total systemization of a virtual community.
All that is topped with a system of beatification. Beautifying of photos and chosen pictures by applying a range of enhancement filters. This function changed the way people present themselves online, and the peer interpretation of “perfect” beauty that will affect viewers’ emotional and psychological responses.
The result of all that, is a “product” user, who developed increased social anxiety. An anxiety that is developed because of the fear of missing out, or being missed out upon, and the feeling of jealousy. Two main social factors that “ads” use to emphasize the bias political and economic messages required in a language that navigates street jargon.
Instagram, is a main cause of many social movements that called to create campaigns of theoretical and practical implications for the design of health campaigns and education to enhance the positive effect of social media on health and emotional well-being, instead of the social comparison, distorted image of beauty, that lowered self-esteem.
How could the platform be improved? I believe the content is the target that needs to be improved and not the platform. Education psychology is to utilize this ready-made platform to instill “learning” of non bias information and knowledge. An emotional intelligence fertile ground ready to use. But are educators and education institutions trained to emotionally reshape education?
As Manuel Castells described such a platform, a Global Surveillance Agency that is a form of a picture or a message that cannot be intercepted, or prisoned.
Instagram … Can we do ant better ?
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Related Links
- Influencers and directed politics and capital
- Deceptions of photos
https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR2961.html
- #Wellbeing
Global Concepts 