The social media and social apps, nowadays, have a great dominance upon people’s lives. People tend to consume social apps greedily; they spend many more hours every day. And apps and websites have a sort of hidden battle of gathering as many as possible of users. Instagram is, undeniably, one of most used and most notorious of them all.
The unique app built its reputation over the years, whilst providing the users with multiple features and experiences. However, inadequate usage and unnatural addict to Instagram could, undoubtedly, emerge very unhealthy emotions within the user’s psychology. And, as a result those not-good-at-all emotions could possibly wear out the mental health of a variety of users. Such an accusation poses a huge threat to the extremely viral app, and, in the same time, raises many questions about the extent of its dominance over seemingly normal lives.
Recently, the Royal Society for Public Health – RSPH – in Britain deemed Instagram as the worst socializing app out there. The app, obviously, has some negative effects upon youngsters, especially the female users. And all of the mental health drawbacks caused by Instagram, unquestionably, affect the whole wellness of the users. And in an attempt to make a somehow silent response to the raised accusations, Instagram decided to establish a “Well-being Team” to handle whatever obstacles caused by excessive Instagram experiences.
But the role of the team and its functions are still very dubious. The popular app didn’t clearly clarify what are the missions or tasks required of the team members. So, some serious definition of the “Wellbeing Team” roles needs to come to the spotlight. On the other hand, Instagram has made some obvious upgrades to its mechanism in order to improve the whole experience of it. For instance, the app added offensive comments filter to keep social abusers at bay; also mental health services could be provided for users in need. But Instagram need to take into consideration the propositions of the RSPH seriously. The app could, for instance, warn the user if he’s been using Instagram way too long; or there could be some sort of a hint if any image has undergone a modification in order to make it more appealing or catchy.
So, Instagram may want to change its criteria of tackling such mental health issues caused by the app itself, but without losing its status amongst the crowd. And no matter how important issues like stress, anxiety, and depression are for a huge part of the community, the notorious app could still approach these issues successfully from afar, but some of the majorly vital mental health problems could still remain untouched.
