Blog post #3 - Social shaping of Instagram

A lot of anxiety comes from social media users as Baym suggests that there are issues surrounding what is really being posted is authentic, as well as interactions and relationships on social media can affect the well-being of people. We see this anxiety first hand with the study surrounding facebook's awareness of instagrams harmful effects on teenage girls. This study indicated that instagram is having a negative impact on the self esteem of young teen girls due to constantly being around images of “the perfect life” and “perfect bodies”, it can be difficult to not compare your own life and appearance to these instagram influencers/models. Looking at Bayms perspective on the causal relationship between technology and the social, these personal and social anxieties of young teen girls can be understood as an impact of the social shaping of technology. This emphasizes the affordances technologies enable (such as posting photos on instagram) and the emergent and often unexpected ways people make use of them (using instagram to become an influencer/model). When instagram first emerged, not many expected that this could be used later for careers such as a social media modeling agency/ or paid traveling experiences and endorsing brands. This social shaping of technology has increased the amount of unrealistic photos and lifestyles being posted, unfortunately increasing the level of comparisons and the drop in self esteem in young teen girls who don’t feel the same to their favourite instagram influencers/models. 




Can you think of any other affordances that instagram enables and unexpected ways people make use of them? Let me know below. :)


-Erika P. 



Comments

  1. Colby HarrisonOctober 24, 2022 at 10:28 AM

    Great post Erika! You do a great job at showing how the technology just offers a medium for humans to use in whichever way they want and what do you know, we began to use it for money. When we talking about the affordances of technology and social shaping I often think of YouTube. YouTube started off great but once people saw the money in it, the platform began to become staged and fictionalized. Clickbaiting, staging videos, creating fake content and so much more. YouTube now feels like a loosely scripted reality tv show rather than the unique platform it once was because of the social shaping of the medium. Thanks for the fun read!

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