The generation that grew up on social media
College students have been on social media for more than a decade. Some are choosing to leave it behind all together.
By Leila Jackson
When college senior Grace Talbert first created an Instagram account in middle school in 2014, she would agonize over which photos to post and how to caption them. Scrolling through her feed, she would notice other girls getting more comments and likes and wondered why her posts were not getting the same reactions.
“I remember feeling so bad, now [that] I look back,” Talbert said. “I was underdeveloped … I was literally in eighth grade, there shouldn't have been a pressure for that.
The Facebook Files, an investigation published by the Wall Street Journal this September reveals how much Facebook, (now Meta) knows the negative effects of their platforms, such as Talbert’s description of comparing herself to others, and consistently chooses to not take action. The series of articles is based on internal documents leaked by whistleblower and former Facebook employee Frances Haugen who testified in front of congress in October.
Among these revelations was leaked research about Instagram, which Facebook owns, that showed that the app has a detrimental effect on young peoples’ mental health, especially when it comes to teenage girls.
More than 40% of Instagram users are 22 years old or younger, and the generation that has grown up being on these apps such is now reflecting on their social media use and its effects on their mental health.
Current college students have been on Instagram since they were in middle school and some, like Talbert, are choosing to quit.
The Facebook Files revealed several harmful effects of Instagram for young people
Another motivation to delete her account was that Talbert began feeling anxious and depressed, and she pinpointed social media as a major reason. Whenever she got on the app, she saw people having fun and felt like she was missing out, coined as "FOMO": “the nagging feeling that other people may be experiencing something fun and awesome but that you are missing out on it.”
“I think it made me feel more depressed in a way and I didn't realize it,” she said.
A few years later, during her junior year of high school, she deleted her account with encouragement from her parents and a friend who had recently deleted hers.
According to an article in the Facebook Files, Instagram researchers looked into the potential harms of the platform and their findings echo Talbert’s feelings of depression and anxiety.
One slide posted to Facebook’s internal message board said, “teens blame Instagram for increases in the rate of anxiety and depression,” and that “this reaction was unprompted and consistent across all groups.”
Last October, college senior Chris Dellosso ditched his smartphone and opted instead for a flip phone. He felt that he was spending too much on social media and hoped it would help him focus more on school. He still has a smartphone for things like navigation, and occasionally checking Instagram and Snapchat, but it does not have service. Dellosso can relate to Talbert’s feelings of depression over FOMO.
“Sometimes you’re just not feeling good, and you see something that makes you feel worse, or something you weren’t invited to, or just feel like you’re just missing out on something,” Dellosso said.
College senior Grace Talbert says she would agonize over which photos to post to Instagram.
The Facebook Files also revealed that Instagram influences body image issues and eating disorders in teenage girls. One leaked study showed that 17 percent of girls say their eating disorders worsened after using Instagram.
College sophomore Angel Bilal stopped using Instagram a year and a half ago partially due to developing insecurities about her body.
“My shape wasn’t as desired as the shapes that you would see on Instagram, and I guess that did kind of lead to me to have another level of sadness and not wanting to be on Instagram anymore,” Bilal said. “I did kind of develop an insecurity about what I look like.”
She never developed an eating disorder but said, “I did think about not eating for a couple days just to lose some weight or maybe do a little more exercise and then eat less.”
Problems like depression, anxiety and body image issues are not new, but social media exacerbates them.
“It hasn't created new psychological mechanisms for how these things are operating, but it does provide almost the perfect storm of how to basically hijack this and ramp it up and increase it exponentially,” said Elon Assistant Professor of Psychology Ilyssa Salomon, who studies the impact of social media on adolescent development.
In response to these issues, Facebook claimed that the Wall Street Journal mischaracterized the research and pointed to the positives of Instagram.
Talbert, who followed the news on Haugen, was unimpressed with Facebook’s response. She pointed to their reaction to a slide in leaked documents that shows that six percent of U.S. teens and 13 percent of U.K. teens said their desire to want to commit suicide started on Instagram.
“How do you not look at [the data] and [think], oh shoot, girls are wanting to commit suicide because they're on our app," Talbert said. "That's concerning."
Salomon agrees that there is a conversation to be had on the responsibility of platforms, but she also thinks a way to mitigate these issues is by using social media intentionally.
“It's become such a large part of what adolescence means and how they interact with one another that I think you'd be hard pressed to just tell them ‘you're not allowed to be on it,'" she said. “The angle that I've always taken is to inform them, teach them how to use it in ways that are going to suit them best and recognize when it maybe is hurting them.”
A small survey on students at Elon University about Instagram
There is also a sense that unlike now, Instagram in its early days, was simpler and there was no pressure to develop a “perfect” profile.
“It’s [an] image-based platform so certainly, there's evidence suggesting that people are putting their best foot forward, they're putting this idealized version of themselves online,” Salomon said.
Now there are features like stories, story highlights and influencers create an aesthetic to their Instagram. Instagram shows individualized photos and videos that they think you may like and advertises personalized content.
“When I was younger you would just post anything, like you could just spam everybody and no one would care at that point, but now everybody's very particular about what they post and how many likes they get,” Talbert said.
A piece by Alice Crossley in Dazed Magazine explains the “make Instagram casual again” trend, a pushback against “aesthetic influencer culture” in which “feeds are curated, themed, and sponsored; it is no longer a photo-sharing app but a universal boasting platform, a place to share a highlight reel of the ‘picture perfect’ parts of your life.”
Crossley explains that when Instagram took off in 2012, it was “quantity over quality and the definition of unaesthetic” and asks, “Could we return to the halcyon days when Instagram mirrored reality and posting was a simple and fun way to store and share memories?”
Dellosso says that if the apps were structured the way they are now when he was younger, it would have been harmful to his mental health.
“I remember getting Instagram back in middle school and it was just the square pictures and that was basically it,” he said. “Now you open it, and you have the stories and the reels and the little magnifying glass that lets you scroll for as long as you can physically scroll for, and [you] just see endless content.”
Senior Chris Dellosso uses a flip phone to reduce his social media use
Social media is here to stay, and even those that quit social media don’t discount it completely. It can keep you connected to friends and family and has created new financial opportunities. Social media like Instagram has also allowed for more diverse representation than traditional media has.
“You have access to these really niche communities that, you know, if you grow up in a small town or something, there aren't people with shared identities as you, that you can find that community in online spaces is a really positive thing,” Salomon said.
Being one and a half and four years off Instagram, respectively, Bilal and Talbert have both noticed positive changes in their mental health and are overall happy with their decision to no longer be on Instagram.
“If I had stayed on, I would still be in that state where I was just longing for that reality that doesn’t exist,” Bilal said. “I’m in a better mental state than I was back when I was on social media.”