Lately social media platforms have become a huge part of our lives. Surveys show that almost 70% of people who are located in advanced countries in Europe, USA, Asia and Australia have their personal account on social platforms such as Instagram, Facebook and Twitter. However,for example, if we have a look on random girls, Instagram pages , we will see that many of them pretend to live luxurious and expensive lives but the truth is not always as it is shown. It became a trend to publish on your Instagram page, pictures posing next to luxury cars, expensive gifts and exotic destinations. We can say that all of these efforts to make your life look luxurious is due to the reputation someone wants to build. No one likes to be related to negative and offensive opinions on social networks – the huge fear to be disliked.
Many people are on Instagram in order to show their lives in a good light. The fight between the users on the social platform is to have as many Instagram likes on their publications as possible. Some people also build their Instagram pages by buying followers on Instagram. Maybe we can explain this as a fear of rejection. Everyone publishes pictures where they look flawless and without any imperfections. In fact it is not a secret that a huge percent of the users on Instagram are using different programs and applications like Photoshop in order to edit their pictures and hide all of their imperfections .Even Instagram itself has so many filters you can put on your images and they will make your face look perfect. No matter all of these, there comes a day when everyone faces reality.
Perhaps these types of people are willing to be accepted by society by acting as they are perfect. Before the development of all these social media platforms no one cared about their online reputation , but now it is a huge thing ,everyone is trying to achieve.It may be a bit confusing when you personally meet someone that you found on social platforms. Here comes the reality. The illusion of a perfect face,body and life cannot make these things perfect in real life, no matter how hard someone is trying to make them look real.
In fact the owners of Instagram have noticed these trends of perfection and recently they announced the suggestion of hiding the count of likes of people’s pictures. The main idea of hiding the number of likes is to remove the pressure that trends imposes over people due to the idea to look perfect.
In instance you can make your own experiment and open the “explore tab” section on Instagram. I am pretty sure that 90% of the publications you will come across would be of people with ideal noses ,lips ,haircuts and not a sign of a single imperfection. However do not let yourself be misled. Perfect people does not exist! Noone has a perfect symmetrical face. You should not let these illusions affect your life or thoughts.
Different social experts came to the conclusion that people are getting depressed using the social platform Instagram , because everything they see on the application are people who look way better than them. The desire for perfection can be really harmful for peoples’ mental health. According to this research,the idea of hiding the number of likes on publication might be a good move ,however there is the danger that influencers on Instagram might lose their jobs, because it would be much harder for brands to choose people to work with without seeing the engagement of their publications.