In the days after my dad died, there were many things I dreaded – one of them being sharing the news on social media. My love for my father had been well-recorded on my Instagram, so the pressure to get the announcement felt simultaneously intense and stupidly superficial. In the end, I chose to turn off the likes and comments on the post because I didn’t want to see engagement on something that was completely heartfelt.
Yesterday, I opened Instagram and noticed an update. Beneath each photo, next to the number of likes and comments, I could now see the number of times a post on my feed had been shared. From what I could tell, this was true for every account across the board – from those with the coveted blue check mark to friends with fewer than 500 followers.
Verified accounts have always had access to this information through a private, back-end dashboard, but it’s never been available to the public until now. And as somebody who has recently found social media really sad, I suddenly felt self-conscious too. In 2019, Instagram , with platform head, Adam Mosseri, explaining, “We want people to worry a little bit less about how many likes they’re getting and spend a bit more time connecting with the people that they care about.
” The option came after a slew of third-party scientific studies released startling findings about the effects of social media on our psyche (an ongoing area of study). Its use is tied and can . Chasing engagement (meaning likes, comments.
