How I Let Instagram Influence My Identity

It was a beautiful fall afternoon in 2011, I was outside with my best friend at the time, engaging in some DIY tie dying. At the time, the setting looked picture perfect. I stopped what I was doing and said, “Wait! I need to put this on Instagram!” I pulled out my iPhone 4 and quickly opened the application. My best friend at the time started asking me why I was taking pictures of our set up if it didn’t even look “that cool”. I smiled at her and said, “Just wait”. I was amazed by, as Alex Williams puts it, “the built-in filters, many of which imbue the photos with a kind of digital nostalgia by mimicking the look of old lenses and film stock, everyone looks a little younger, a bit prettier, more cover-worthy”.

I made my friend download the application so she could take a picture, too. At first, she was a skeptic of its greatness. Little did she know that by 2014 it would become the home of 100 million users, and it would grow to be a 35 billion dollar company eventually owned by Facebook. Little did I know that by 2014 this application would grow to give me the worst and best times of my life.

I was only in 14 years old when I started using Instagram, which was also around the time I started trying to search for my true identity, as many teens do. As a child, I was overweight and often bullied for my size. I grew to be a very anxious and unhappy person, however, I masked my emotions and my low confidence so well that my family and friends had no idea about the “real” me. At 14, I was just trying to find my place in the world. Unfortunately, I was so unhappy with the person I was on both the inside and outside, and I felt I could never figure out who I actually was. In Identity, Myria Georgiou tells us,“in everyday life, [identity] primarily relates to the presentation of the self to others: identity is no less than an ordinary performance.” I felt like I was under performing in creating my own identity. I didn’t feel comfortable in my own skin, but my Instagram page would have never projected any of the things I am telling you. I felt that my digital self was the “happiest, most confident, and coolest” me. Instagram allowed me to gain a little more confidence about myself, as I was able to the share aspects of myself that I wanted people to know me. On the other the other hand, Instagram became one of my biggest critics and worst enemies.

The developers of Instagram did not create the application with the intention of negatively impacting anyone, they did it with the intention of creating a positive impact on society, but with every yang there is a yin. At first, I thought it was amazing to have the opportunity to get a peak into the lives of both celebrities and the people in my life. I felt personally connected to all of them, but this connection later developed to an envy- not just an envy of their lives, but of their bodies. Throughout the day I would spend hours on my phone scrolling through my feed: selfie of a gorgeous girl, bikini shot of a model, picture of an annoyingly cute couple, repeat. I started to get jealous of the lives of other people simply from looking at an image on my phone. Crazy, right?! This is what Alex Williams would call Instagram Envy, stating that, “envy, of course, doesn’t operate in a social vacuum. It needs an object of desire. And everyone, it seems, has that friend on Instagram: the one with the perfect clothes and the perfect hair and seemingly perfect life — which seem all the more perfect when rendered in the rich teals and vivid ambers of Instagram’s filters.” This envy became the reason for many of my self destructive behaviors. It was hard for me to not compare myself to all of those pretty people. Eventually, I began to try to change myself in order to feel and look more like them. My mindset was that if I was skinny enough or pretty enough that maybe I’d start to feel as good as them. It never even crossed my mind that the images of those pretty people never reflected their personal emotions or even accurate appearance. They too, like myself, could be struggling with self confidence issues; they too, could be compulsively comparing themselves to other people.

For years I continued to allow my perception of Instagram images impact my self confidence levels. It wasn’t until 2013 when I realized that I had created a monster from my Instagram usage. I decided to delete my profile and take a break from social media. During that time I worked on building my confidence up. Instead of letting an application shape my personal identity, I began to show myself that I am more than just an image. I am more than what is on my exterior. I am a strong, intelligent, caring, funny, and responsible young lady- none of which you could ever decipher from an Instagram photo. A social media profile will never accurately depict who I am as a person, my triumphs, or my defeats. You'll never truly know who I am until you get to know the person inside of me, and the most purest ways I think I can portray that are through my words, both written and spoken.