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 just right 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 rolled out the ability to hide the number of likes on your posts, 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 to lower self-esteem and can lead to disordered eating. Chasing engagement (meaning likes, comments, and shares)—an important form of validation for most social media users—can be especially toxic or triggering for young women. (Of course, social media has its benefits too, including helping people to find community when they are feeling isolated.)
This week’s update seemed like a huge step back in the move toward reducing the pressures of social media. “We recently launched share counts on feed posts and hope this is a helpful measure in understanding what resonates with others using Instagram,” a Meta spokesperson shares with Vogue. The change is consistent with how reels are viewed, and will soon be rolled out globally.
However, the Meta spokesperson adds that, much like 2019’s option to hide likes, you can choose to hide shares by going to your Instagram settings, clicking or tapping “Like and share counts” (under the “What you see” section), and selecting “Hide like and share counts.”
Because of this recent update, my father’s death now has Instagram metrics associated with it. Two hundred and twelve—that’s how many times the Instagram post I wrote about his beautiful life, his death, and the 33 years we spent together was shared. It was a number I didn’t want to know—one I was trying to avoid. If Meta is serious about advancing their digital well-being initiatives (after all, they have an entire site dedicated to it), providing yet more data related to the “success” of a post isn’t the way to do it.
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