It’s no kept secret that teens like using social networking as a way to inform people about what’s going on in their daily lives. Now, yet another social networking site, Instagram, gives them another outlet to do so.
Instagram is a free photo-sharing program, and social network service that enables users to take a photo, apply a digital filter to it, and then share it with any other Instagram user, or on a variety of other social networking sites.
“I use [Instagram] a lot as a way to document daily life,” said senior Tanishia Thomas, who says she uploads about seven photos every day. “You get to learn more about people and what they do; you get to see what they do during the day.”
Thomas is one of many students who see Instagram as a much simpler way to use social networking.
“It’s simpler because there’s no random stuff,” Thomas said. “There’s a basic point to it: you post a picture and that’s it; there’s no stupid stuff like game requests or spam.”
Now, with the total amount of Instagram users boasting 50 million active users as of September 2012, the number of users is growing. Instagram gains one new user every second, and over one billion photos have been taken with the app already.
“It draws people in with popularity,” senior Abbey Johnson said. “Other people are like, ‘Oh, other people use it, maybe I should too.’”
Instagram also hosts a large amount of famous users. Celebrities such as Katy Perry, Emma Roberts and Lucy Hale are just a few of the site’s active celebrities who people can follow.
Now that the Instagram trend is growing, arguments have begun between people who see it solely as a fun, quick way to upload photos, and people who stand by traditional photography.
Some people are sick of hearing about Instagram. Some cafes, (including San Francisco’s “Four Barrel Coffee” who started the trend) have gone as far as banning customers from using, or even talking about Instagram while in the shop as they feel it’s just another annoying social network for people to gossip about.
Junior Katy Young sees Instagram’s popularity as a fad with our generation.
“I think [Instagram] is popular because this generation keeps getting less creative and it’s an easy way to feel artistic. It’s fun for quick pictures but it’s the furthest thing from photography,” Young said.
As Instagram continues to dominate the lives of people and teens everywhere, a photography hobby seems to take a backseat as an achievement now that digital effects can be applied with the click of a button. So many people ask, do digital features applied through Instagram count as art?
“I think the fact that all you do is add a
filter makes it generic,” Young said. “People are already over using photo editing to make themselves look better; I don’t think it’s real photography.”
While some people think Instagram limits creativity, other people think it helps improve the beauty in photos.
“I like Instagram because it can edit photos to make them more beautiful,” sophomore Cheyenne Altomare said.
Altomare sees Instagram as a creative new way to make any photo beautiful.
“It adds more creativity every time you upload a photo, then you can take the pretty pictures and put them on other sites, like Facebook,” Altomare said.
With more users than ever before, Instagram continues to become an active part in teen’s lives.
–By Meredith Norman