I have such a love-hate relationship with social media.
Don’t get me wrong, I owe it to social media to where I am now with so many thousands of followers following my work and seeing what I get up to. I’ve enjoyed the interactions I’ve gotten over the years from comments, a photo booming with likes, and DM conversations.
But over the years, I’ve seen a side of social media that I’m starting to dislike. As much as I tell people “don’t chase the likes” or let the “likes” govern what content you post, I can’t help but check the number of likes each of my posts gets. I’ve noticed over the months and years that the number of likes I usually get is dwindling. Now that could be the photos I’ve uploaded, no one is interested in and just scroll past but recently I caught sight of my “reach” and of the thousands that follow my accounts, only a few hundreds seem to see them! I could blame Mr Zuckerberg for his monetisation model as I don’t believe I should be paying for my posts to be seen by my followers who chose and want to see my work, but also other social pages are turning to monetisation model so this would seem to only get worse.
Also in my personal life, I’ve noticed that I’m spending more and more time “doom scrolling” on Instagram and Facebook. Part of it is an inspiration to how other people take photos and see what aspects I can take. However, I’ve started to feel such FOMO in certain aspects when looking into people’s profiles, but I have to remember that people’s profiles are very “curated” feeds and mostly want to share only the best version of themselves online.
I’ve recently watched a documentary on BBC Three about the use of Instagram, featuring models, influencers, users of the platform talking about how it has affected their lives. I found the documentary such a fascinating watch, seeing the work influencers go through to keep up with their feed, how Instagram can be used in such a negative way, and promoting products that are unhealthy. Seeing how people do things to achieve that Instagram moment look, and it really is for that moment in front of the camera to get likes, shares and more.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m00149j7/the-instagram-effect
I don’t like how many sharing pages want to charge you to have your photo to share on their page which I’m sure their number of followers are “inflated” to look better than it should be. The number of times I’ve trolled these pages thinking they are going to get my money. I simply believe, sharing page sites should be doing it cause they like and want to share your work, no one should pay for promotion share like that.
As much as I’ve mentioned aspects of social media I dislike, I have to admit I’m constantly drawn into seeing what wonderful photos my friends or people I follow have uploaded. I do get excited when a photo of mine does particularly well with all the likes and comments it gets. It’s given me a window to contact and interact with people I would never have done in real life. At the end of the day, I need to remember to use social media in moderation and spend time on other aspects that are in my life.
Let me know what you think about social media if you share any of what I’ve written or want to add something about social media you like or dislike about it. I love to hear your comments below.
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