Social media is everywhere in all forms. Social media has also greatly evolved over the years. It’s how we keep in touch with our friends and family and how we see content from our favorite celebrities. Many are wondering if the social media giant Instagram is outdated or is dying.
Instagram turned 10 years old in 2020 and is still in the top five most popular social networks worldwide as of January 2021, with around 1.2 billion active users, most of whom are aged 108-34, the millennial generation, according to Statista.
Instagram is the second most logged–in social media site, according to data from the Pew Research Center, and the sixth most visited website, according to Hootsuite’s “Digital 2020: October Update.”
Jenn Chen, a regular contributor for Sprout Social, described Instagram in an article on the company’s site as “The visual-centric platform that began as a photo-posting app has grown into a source of income for creators and a new sales channel for businesses.”
With Chen’s statement and all these statistics, where are people getting the idea that Instagram is dying or outdated?
One Reddit user, u/lacpoer, believes that Instagram will be replaced by a new social media app eventually.
“It happened when people went from MySpace to Facebook, then Facebook to Instagram,” u/lacpoer wrote in a post over a year ago in the r/Instagram subreddit, the un-official subreddit for Instagram.com.
In reply to another Reddit user’s response under this thread, u/lacpoer also wrote, “the new big social media is never something you see coming.”
Rufat Rassulov, a self-proclaimed tech geek who writes articles on Medium, listed the three issues he thinks Instagram is currently having in an article for Predict, a Medium Publication. Rassulov wrote that Instagram is borrowing from other apps, is oversaturated and has a messed up algorithm.
Rassulov cited part of a Forbes article by contributor Anthony Svirskis in his Medium article about Instagram dying.
“Reels is Instagram’s version of TikTok, a video format of a maximum 15 seconds often containing popular music, dancing or pranks,” the Forbes article reads. “Reels is a longer form of content than Instagram Stories, a feature they borrowed from Snapchat; and a shorter content form than IGTV which is their version of YouTube. Are you noticing a trend?”
The trend is very obvious: Instagram is borrowing an awful lot of features from other apps instead of coming up with their own unique feature.
The second issue with Instagram that Rassulov discusses is that the social media site is oversaturated.
“Instagram is trying to be all in one,” Rassulov wrote. “It has messaging, video chats, posts, stories, going live, Reels, IGTV, and other stuff inside of it, which makes Instagram all over the place.”
He’s not wrong. I personally remember when the only things you could do on Instagram were: post pictures and send messages, which had to have a picture with them.
The third and final issue that Rassulov brings up is that the Instagram algorithm is not that good.
“Explore page is very bad at choosing the right content and it is often full of irrelevant TikTok videos,” Rassulov wrote.
Reddit user u/TheBoredMan brought up a very interesting point about the Instagram algorithm under a recent thread in the r/Instagram subreddit.
“Their algorithm is out of control,” u/TheBoredMan wrote. “I’m getting told I’m ‘all caught up’ on my feed and it starts showing me ‘recommended posts’ from people I don’t even follow. Meanwhile I click on any friends profile and there’s new posts I never saw in my feed.”
Even though some users aren’t happy with the current state of Instagram, statistics prove that the app is doing better than ever and isn’t planning on slowing down anytime soon.
I agree that Instagram is currently having its fair share of problems. I see content from maybe a quarter of the accounts I follow. I also don’t like how Instagram has adopted aspects from other apps, such as Stories and Reels.
The app has pros and cons, but until user numbers start declining, the app won’t be going anywhere in the near future.
Photo by Jamia Johnson
