According to the IFJ, Instagram is popular among Iranians because it is seen as an outlet for freedom and a “window to the world”.Still, Iran has sentenced citizens to prison for posts made on their Instagram accounts. Like many social media sites, Instagram employs a combination of automated algorithms, user reports and human review to identify and remove illegal content such as child abuse and encouragement of terrorism. In contrast, the level of agreement expressed in creating Instagram posts was lower, which demonstrates that Instagram’s emphasis on visual communication is widely accepted by young people in social communication. The motives for using Instagram among young people are mainly to look at posts, particularly for the sake of social interactions and recreation. Recently Instagram has come up with an option for users to apply for a verified account badge; however, this does not guarantee every user who applies will get the verified blue tick. From June 2012 to June 2013, Instagram approximately doubled their number of users.
The developer, Instagram, Inc., indicated that the app’s privacy practices may include handling of data as described below.

Verified badges on Instagram

The first interviewed 15 monthly Californian instagram users with low body image and self esteem, aged 13-21. Suggested posts received more controversy after Fast Company stated that the feature would be impossible to turn off. The company wrote a tweet to users upset at the prospect of the change, but did not back down, nor provide a way to change it back, which they reaffirmed in 2020. In April 2016, Instagram began rolling out a change to the order of photos visible in a user’s timeline, shifting from a strictly chronological order to one determined by an algorithm. It was followed by the release of Hyperlapse in August, an iOS-exclusive app that uses “clever algorithm processing” to create tracking shots and fast time-lapse videos. Commission-enabled posts are labeled “Eligible for Commission” on the user side to identify them as affiliate posts.

Explore

  • On October 21, 2009, the first web-based prototype of Burbn was released online, although it was basic and non-functional, it featured a registration waiting list.
  • However, Frison & Eggermont 2017 found that, among boys and girls, browsing could predict depressive symptoms; liking and posting seemed to have no effect.
  • If a piece of content is labeled false or partly false on Facebook or Instagram then duplicates of such content will also be labeled as false.
  • In May 2017, a survey conducted by the United Kingdom’s Royal Society for Public Health, featuring 1,479 people aged 14–24 and asking them to rate social media platforms depending on anxiety, depression, loneliness, bullying and body image, concluded that Instagram was the “worst for young mental health”.
  • In December 2017, Instagram began to allow users to follow hashtags, which display relevant highlights of the topic in their feeds.
  • In March 2021, Instagram launched a new feature in which four people can go live at once.

In November 2019, it was announced that Instagram would start to roll out a new feature to Brazil known as Instagram Reels. Albums were introduced in February 2017, which allow up to 10 minutes of video to be shared in one post. The addition was seen by some in the technology media as Facebook’s attempt at competing with the then-popular video-sharing application Vine.

Negative comments

Then, the following month, Reels officially launched in 50 countries including the United States, Canada and United Kingdom. Instagram Reels was officially launched in Pakistan in August 2022, two years after its global rollout in August 2020. Instagram Reels is the short-form section of the American social media platform Instagram. In May 2017, Instagram once again updated the Explore tab to promote public Stories content from nearby places. The trends deemed the most popular on the platform often highlight a specific day of the week to post the material on. Users can set their account as “private”, thereby requiring that they approve any new follower requests.
In November 2018, Instagram added the ability for business accounts to add product links directing users to a purchase page or to save them to a “shopping list”. The new analytics page, known as Instagram Insights, allowed business accounts to view top posts, reach, impressions, engagement and demographic data. The company launched carousel image ads in October 2015, and video carousel ads in March 2016. Paid verification allowed eligible Instagram users to request verification for their accounts via paying a fee, rather than relying solely on meeting the platform’s traditional criteria for verification.
The Wall Street Journal reported that some parents are concerned about the effects of short-form videos on their children, as 0xbet there is no way to disable Instagram or set limits. Researchers from the Guizhou University of Finance and Economics and Western Michigan University found that short-form videos like YouTube Shorts, TikTok, and Instagram Reels may make it easier for young adults and children to develop addictive behavior because short-form videos provide “short bursts of thrills”. The number of monthly users also increased from 1.5 billion in 2022 to 1.8 billion as of 2024.
On April 3, 2012, Instagram released a version of its app for Android phones, and it was downloaded more than one million times in less than one day. On October 6, 2010, the Burbn Beta iOS app was made available through the App Store, though this was still just a prototype only. On October 21, 2009, the first web-based prototype of Burbn was released online, although it was basic and non-functional, it featured a registration waiting list.

Loneliness and social exclusion

  • Confirming ‘lurking’, this study found that those who use Reels for peeking neither created any content nor participated, instead they were only keen on watching others content.
  • In January 2011, Instagram introduced hashtags to help users discover both photos and each other.
  • Microsoft launched a Hyperlapse app for Android and Windows in May 2015, but there has been no official Hyperlapse app from Instagram for either of these platforms to date.
  • Ongoing research continues to explore how media content on the platform affects user engagement.
  • In October 2015, it released Boomerang, a video app that combines photos into short, one-second videos that play back-and-forth in a loop.

However, unlike post likes, the user who posted a comment does not receive notifications about comment likes in their notification inbox. On May 11, 2016, Instagram revamped its design, adding a black-and-white flat design theme for the app’s user interface, and a less skeuomorphistic, more abstract, “modern” and colorful icon. The slideshow banner on the top of profile pages, which simultaneously slide-showed seven picture tiles of pictures posted by the user, alternating at different times in a random order, has been removed. Furthermore, one row of pictures only has three instead of five photos to match the mobile layout. In June 2015, the desktop website user interface was redesigned to become more flat and minimalistic, but with more screen space for each photo and to resemble the layout of Instagram’s mobile website. In November 2012, Instagram launched website profiles, allowing anyone to see user feeds from a web browser with limited functionality, as well as a selection of badges, and web widget buttons to link to profiles.

The app received around 25,000 registrations that day, though it remained a public beta. The Burbn Beta app was made available for iOS on October 6, 2010, by Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger — still as a prototype, but for the first time available as a real app on the App Store rather than a web-based prototype. A Meta-operated image-centric social media platform, it is available on iOS, Android, Windows 10, and the web. Privacy practices may vary based, for example, on the features you use or your age.

A camera inside Direct lets users take a photo and send it to the recipient without leaving the conversation. The feature received a major update in September 2015, adding conversation threading and making it possible for users to share locations, hashtag pages, and profiles through private messages directly from the news feed. These researchers found that college students in the U.S. and China watch short-form videos for entertainment, knowledge, and to build social identities. A Meta spokesperson explained, “We have fixed an error that caused some users to see content in their Instagram Reels feed that should not have been recommended. We apologize for the mistake.” Despite the “TikTokification” of Reels and the parent company Meta spending millions on courting content creators, user engagement continued to lag way behind TikTok as of 2022.
Josh Riedel joined the company in October as Community Manager, Shayne Sweeney joined in November as an engineer, and Jessica Zollman joined as a Community Evangelist in August 2011. Instagram began development in San Francisco as Burbn, a mobile check-in app created by Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger. In April 2012, Facebook acquired the service for approximately US$1 billion in cash and stock.
According to Dr. Anna Lembke, a psychiatrist and chief of Stanford University’s dual diagnosis addiction clinic, brief attention-grabbing videos act as powerful stimuli triggering dopamine surges akin to other addictive behaviors. Recent studies highlighted the connection between short-form videos such as Instagram Reels and the brain’s reward system, specifically dopamine release. When children watch short-form videos, they learn to expect continual stimulation and fast-paced changes, which can cause problems when engaging in activities that require greater focus, such as reading.
The company will put suggested posts ahead of posts from people who the user is following in the Instagram feed, citing positive reception as the reason for this change. On June 23, 2021, Instagram announced a test change to the “suggested posts” feature. Since 2017, Instagram has employed the ability to reduce the prominence of accounts (“shadowbanning”) it believes may be generating non-genuine engagement and spam (including excessive use of unneeded hashtags), preventing posts from appearing in search results and in the app’s Explore section. However, in December 2021, Adam Mosseri, in a Senate hearing on child safety issues, stated that the company is developing a version of the feed that would show user posts in chronological order. In May 2016, Instagram launched new tools for business accounts, including business profiles, analytics and the ability to promote posts as ads.
It helps users easily identify legitimate accounts amidst the vast number of profiles on the platform. In June 2017, Instagram revised its live-video functionality to allow users to add their live broadcast to their story for availability in the next 24 hours, or discard the broadcast immediately. In May 2017, Instagram expanded the augmented reality sticker feature to support face filters, letting users add specific visual features onto their faces. In March 2021, a feature was added that prevents adults from messaging users under 18 who do not follow them as part of a series of new child safety policies. A new update in November 2016 let users make their private messages “disappear” after being viewed by the recipient, with the sender receiving a notification if the recipient takes a screenshot.