CONTENT WARNING: Mentions of eating disorders may be triggering to some readers.

You’ve seen it on Instagram: someone posts a photo of the final image intended for posting, with a swipe left to see the overly posed behind the scenes of taking it or 58th take of the photo in process. It’s a bit like the #BoyfriendsOfInstagram phenomenon with the transparency to see the Instagram Boyfriend in unofficial photographer mode.

And this isn’t just done by influencers. Regular Instagram users, some of whom you may have seen do this, regularly portray a faux personality to up their Instagram game for likes and clicks.

Why do we need this? In another chapter of We Don’t Feel Good Enough On Social Media, celebrities and influencers are affecting the way regular Instagrammers use the platform, wasting hours of days trying to get a photo just right. Or, glamming up merely for a photo. Who lives like this in reality?

Take this image, which spurred my thinking on the image. Natalia Vodianova is a Russian model and philanthropist, who took this photo with her son. Having both images completely defeats the purpose, doesn’t it? I’d hypothesise that the second image (or “reality”) would perform much better alone compared to being paired with the “Instagram” style image or that image by itself. Social media is an expression of self and personality which has slowly become an expression of who you “wish you were” or “this is what I do so I can get likes”. It’s completely and utterly transparent-- in a bad way.

The psychological impacts on this kind of behaviour can be devastating, with effects from disordered eating, including orthorexia (an eating disorder that has largely stemmed from social media), and warped perspectives on how oneself or society is perceived.

The “trend” began as a way to show the outtakes and behind the scenes of taking the final shot, but now, like in Vodianova’s post, it just seems to be a way of showing how much effort people do go to in order to get engagement on their posts, or a few extra bucks.

Social media software company puts it bluntly and succinctly: “In the past few years, influencers realised that being vulnerable and relatable is the thing that brings them a lot of attention. When I say attention, I mean reach and ads.”

While highlighting imperfections is certainly a step in the right direction, it seems counterproductive to campaign for natural selves and post the complete opposite. If we have to provide the evidence that our lives on Instagram aren’t real, what’s the point? It’s seemingly asking for more attention while simultaneously trying to seem humble. Cynical? Perhaps. But we can’t walk around asking for realness and positive body image while these kinds of manipulated posts are still being posted.

It’s similar when people have two separate Instagram accounts in order to be able to post starkly different content. In most cases, the public “Instagram” account is where they post the glam, edited version of their lives whereas the private “Reality” account (usually @profilenamex2) allows unfiltered content that only a close-knit group can see. 

There have even been cases where celebrities and influencers have been singled out for having two nice images as the Instagram vs. Reality post, completely contradicting why the concept was first used.

There have been studies that show how dissatisfied women feel at viewing the idealised “Instagram” image compared to when they are side by side with the “reality” images. This is one positive of having both images, but the participants in the study still determined that the images together proved Instagram can be unattainable and unrealistic. It’s likely that this may affect all other genders— everyone.

I think if social media users were given more real content in the first place, as the platform was initially created for, the need to impress every single one of our followers for that exact number of likes wouldn’t be necessary. (Very wishful thinking, but what we’re hoping for in 2020!)

If this won’t happen, then the least we can do is to speak up and comment on this kind of vapid behaviour so to not endorse it, or simply curate a positive feed for ourselves by unfollowing.