Why Is Instagram So Popular Among Youth?
It was the last year, when the fourth most popularly used social media application, Instagram (also known as IG or Insta) completed its 10 years of remarkable existence with over 1 billion monthly active accounts (as of June 2018), where Cristiano Ronaldo and Ariana Grande are the most followed male and female celebrity with 240 million and 208 million followers respectively. This California based photo and short-video sharing social networking application have left behind the most trending other social media applications like Twitter and Snapchat with its alluring features.
Instagram has revolutionized social networking in the sense that it is a social platform but also very minimalistic, allowing people to share their moments only through photographs and videos. But nowadays, it is visible that more and more people are engaging themselves in Instagram either to express the new artistic skills that they have acquired in the lockdown period or to follow their favourite celebrities or inspirational luminaries of their niche to get motivated and to start up something very fantastic. Be it the Dalgona Coffee challenge or the Let’s Dance challenge, Instagram has never tired its users.
The popular features like- IGTV (for long term videos), Reels (for short videos of maximum 30 seconds), Instagram Live (to share the live content streaming) and Stories (photos or videos that appear only for 24 hours) have always attracted its users closer to its compass.
Additionally, Instagram also provides its users with the facility of having more than one account. Yes, Instagram facilitates two types of accounts, namely Personal Account and Professional Account. People who just want to use Instagram for their entertainment and consider Instagram as a platform to connect with friends choose to get hands-on a personal account. Whereas when a person wants to make Instagram as his/her online office to put up his/her work professionally for the business purpose chooses a professional account. Different categories of people who can have a professional account are artists, digital creators, photographers, entrepreneurs, etc.
Most people who are professional influencers in Instagram prefer to maintain two accounts. A professional account that connects themselves to millions of their followers or people who love them for the work they do and can keep them updated of their daily activities. And a personal account, to stay connected with their dear and near ones like family, friends and acquaintances.
Well, we all know that a picture itself can speak a thousand words and that’s why Michael Krieger and Kevin Systrom created this unique application on 6th October 2010 that now plays a vital role in the lives of young adults. According to the reports, 67% of its regular users are of the age group 18-24 that simply indicates that every two out of three people are the youth who uses this application.
And that’s where the question arises, why is Instagram so popular among the youth? Instagram has played an extreme role in 21st-century popular culture, with its notable users dubbed as “influencers.” Some of the major reasons to be responsible for this are:
First
the minimum restricted age for an individual to join and create an account on Instagram is just 13 years, making it the fourth topmost users indulged in any mobile app. Through Instagram, one can click and capture his/her favorite moment, post it as a still photograph or a short video of 15-30 seconds, receive likes & comments that in turn can satisfy their need of receiving attention. According to the latest reports, on an average 95 million photos are posted, 40 million of them are shared and about 4.2 billion posts are liked per day.
Second
Instagram allows us to create a personalized profile. Our account will show the news feed, keeping us updated with famous people’s Instagrams. When we post a photo or video, it shows up on our profile. Besides that, we could see other people’s posts too. Apart from being referred as a web application it prominently serves as a platform where people irrespective of their caste, tribe and nation can discover what’s new, what’s trending, what their loved ones are up to, and because Instagram captures the swiftness of any moment, the media in their feeds provide an on-the-spot connection to that individual or community distanced at any part of the world.
It allows people to follow friends, acquaintances, brands, business accounts and any creative person who inspires us all in one place, as many like to say the more, the merrier. And when we see lots of posts, it inspires us too to post something as we get many people to share our thoughts.
Third
According to psychologists, people tend to admire themselves, their developing skills when they are into the adolescent stage of life. Photography is an extension of our creativity. And because Instagram majorly focuses on the art of photography and videography to be published socially on a global platform, this makes it enticing to its users. Posting our work on Instagram takes the amateur artist inside of us on a level higher. Moreover, as Instagram provides a wide range of features, that predominantly can be used to edit our photos and videos to make it into another level, we can even make the effort to be more creative and put much artistry in our photos and photography so that we can post better-looking images on our account.
Fourth
Although, in today’s era of digitalization, writing is an arduous task that requires thinking and patience and not everyone can convey a life experience or an opinion properly through words. But in the case of pictures, one doesn’t need to put in too much thought as the picture itself speaks about the reality virtually. As everyone knows, audio-visual content is far better than text and nowadays it is the visual content that is dominating our screens today. Even people are also so busy in their respective worlds that they are least interested in reading through text all the time and prefer to see the content visually, as it is more appealing and catchier.
And that’s how millions of users are being attracted by the most captivating feature that this application provides for its people. No doubt, everyone in the world is fluent in photos and videos, even if they don’t like themselves to be the hero of the picture. Hence, it allows the far or nearby placed but digitally connected individuals to connect and come together.
Fifth
The fifth reason why youth like to use Instagram is that it promotes relationships with more and more people. Instagram is accessible worldwide. Therefore, if we post something, it can be seen all around the world. Those who have relatives residing in another nation can easily share what they are up to through this social media app. As it provides people with a platform to share moments which earlier were restricted to being private or acquaintances. But perhaps most importantly, it allows other people (mostly strangers) to instantly put forward their opinions on our life moments, thus making us feel the center of attention. And after all, who doesn’t like being told good things about themselves.
And this zest of Instagram is the result why it is so popular among the new and social media crazy youth.
