On my tenth birthday, I received ownership of my first Apple product: a sixth–generation iPod Touch. Having spent months co–filming videos for my friends’ social media accounts, I yearned for a device to create my own portfolios. Immediately after activating this device, I proceeded to download every social networking app I knew of: Snapchat, Vine, Musical.ly, X, YouTube, and Instagram. I viewed all these applications as essential towards launching my content creation journey, ignoring the excessive storage my “SM!” folder consumed.
Retrospectively, my—and many of Generation Z’s—initial dive into social media occurred alongside a unique period for these apps—when each platform contained a discrete genre of content. Beginning in 2008, the iPhone’s App Store allowed various software developers to share new methods for virtual interaction. The corresponding "Social Media Boom" produced various categories for user–generated content, such as live streams, status updates, and image sharing and editing.
Following each app’s public debut, its communities constructed norms for content style. After creating my online networking accounts, I scrolled through the platforms' “Explore” pages for hours, allowing me a glimpse into each app’s trendiest material. These personalities exemplified an underlying truth surrounding virality; to assert dominance on a specific platform, one’s content must follow a prescribed notion of appropriateness. That is, a user must become proficient in the app's standards of formality and creativity.
In the early 2010s, young adults began defining particular sites as exclusively for aesthetic content. For example, the first generation of Snapchatters constructed the acceptability of posting selfies to one’s story. However, most users utilized Snapchat’s own camera to do so, rather than their phone’s: the in–app lens provided features to beautify facial features and amplify the background’s picturesqueness. Through initial popularization of these filters, Snapchat’s users implicitly created expectations for public profiles—discouraging unfiltered photos for (unironic) posts. Bloggers connoted Pinterest similarly: the app’s mood boards reflect carefully planned color and thematic schemes, rather than simple photo dumps.
Other applications evolved as forums—venues for sharing briefer, more informal content. On X, I observed the one to two sentence length requirement for most posts—usually extremely niche commentary. Tweeters never shied from sharing “shower thoughts” or philosophical perspectives about daily life’s most random topics. Like X, Vine users also shared memes: short clips whose pure stupidity to make you laugh hysterically for fifteen minutes. This application provided a venue for “lowbrow” content, differing from the song covers, tutorials, vlogs, and Q&As of YouTube. Importantly, microblogging and short–form video sites appropriated the public expression of unpleasant emotions—pursuing a multi-paragraph rant about your co–worker’s incompatibility, or roasting them in a ten–second clip.
But as a social media user psychologically matures, the reservation of personality traits to discrete platforms poses a minor inconvenience. In 2019, the Northwestern Magazine classified the average individual as “high in neuroticism and extraversion”—describing the human tendency to mentally revert between distress and gregariousness. So, consistently alternating platforms for sharing your major milestones and rants can be quite tedious. What if there was one platform that allowed humans to express all corners of the emotional spectrum?
Enter Instagram.
Instagram’s original functions were very narrow. For several years following the app’s inception, an Instagram post consisted of either a singular photo or videos between three and 15 seconds long. Additionally, these relatively simple options for user behavior coincided with Instagram’s “casual” era from about 2010–2015: typically users captured moments within their ordinary day–to–day lives. In 2015, Selena Gomez posted a selfie of herself in a car, with the caption merely highlighting admiration for her pictured sweatshirt. This photo was in Instagram’s top 10 liked photos for that year—celebrities modeling gratitude for life’s simpler joys. For Gen Z, this wave of casualness from influencers established a precedent: Instagram posts did not require much artistry from the user to reap positive feedback.
However, starting in 2016, Meta began rapidly evolving Instagram’s features. The company introduced Instagram Stories in August 2016, Instagram Reels in August 2020, and most recently Threads in July 2023. Currently, Instagram no longer is condensed to its original, founding vision as a photo-sharing app: Users can create a slideshow, film short clips, and share brief statements about their life’s happenings.
Sound familiar?
Upon further look, you might notice that these additions duplicate other applications’ software: Snapchat stories, Musical.ly (now TikTok) videos, and tweets. In fact, Instagram’s rebrand with these features has shadowed its inaugural vision of simplicity: representing each moment through one square photo. Rather, the app has conglomerated all the social network’s previously distinct genres—removing account holders’ need to engage with rival services. While many other networking sites have implemented copycat products to increase user engagement, Instagram stands alone as a conglomeration of social media’s vast inventory of offerings.
One could dismiss Instagram’s strategy for regrowth as a sleazy business tactic. However, this business campaign could underlie the app’s outreach success. Instagram provides outlets for sharing both life’s happiest and challenging moments, with a “Close Friends” story for complaints, and a regular story for hot girl moments. In this regard, Instagram has traversed the social media industry’s previous norms for content: it promotes exchange of both formal and informal posts. Further, much of today’s youth first downloaded Instagram as tweens, and have remained active users into their late teens and early 20s. Gen Z’s transition between childhood to young adulthood paralleled Instagram’s evolution from its original, minimalistic format.
As thirteen year olds, many utilized Instagram for leisure—uploading pics of Starbucks drinks, mall outings, or other simple joys. Now, Instagram caters to our lives as college students—providing threads for political discourse, reels for shopping hauls, and layout designs to not only highlight personal outings, but advertise pre–professional opportunities.
The secret behind Instagram’s monopoly? Commodifying emotions—but doing it right.
