Exactly. I've carefully tailored my feed so it provides me with a huge amount of dog photos. Now every time I get on there my mood is usually boosted seeing cute dog photos and videos.

100% agree with this, as do several of my friends. Curated correctly (pretty easy to do), Instagram becomes a place of respite and solace. And for some, a pleasant peaceful channel before going to sleep for the night. Kind of ironically :)

That's not using Instagram in general anymore though, that's heavily censoring Instagram towards very non-typical streams.

It's as if responding to someone that said that one can never find any positive stream on Instagram, when people actually complained about what Instagram, at its majority, and as is used by most, is.

Everyone's Instagram feed is different and that's by design. Everyone curates differently for themselves. I don't think the point you're making is really that strong.

Media broadly is what you make of it. Turn on the TV and flip to CNN, I'm sure you'll be depressed within a couple minutes. At some basic level the burden of information curation rests on you - the human. You can't keep blaming CNN, Instagram, Facebook, Buzzfeed, etc etc ad infinitum.

At some point you have to step back and take the responsibility of information intake into your own hands.

That's not to say you don't have a valid point. You absolutely do have a valid point. But it's not as useful of a point as you're suggesting imo.

How do you prevent yourself from thinking "how amazing their world is", or "how amazing my world could be but isn't"? Most people can change their thinking about this manually to some extent, but I can definitely see how it could be a big problem for a significant subset.

The things that bring most pleasure (family, friends, learning, creating and exercise) have nothing to do with any of the fake stuff on Instagram. I've been on yachts and frankly I was bored out of my mind and dying to leave.

>You have to curate your feed. Curate curate curate.

So the counter-argument is that Instagram is not so depressing provided that one uses as little Instagram as possible ("curate, curate, curate")?

That kind of proves the parent's point (which wasn't that one can't possible ever find anything non-depressing/jealousy inducing on Instagram).

> one uses as little Instagram as possible

No, you didn't understand. The point is that you should follow things that make you feel good and cut off access to things that make you feel bad. Choose your experience. Curate your feed. That's supposed to be the whole point.

It's like the difference between enjoying a glass of fine wine and alcoholic abuse that causes cirrhosis.

Isn't that like only following people whose political views you agree with?

On one hand, we've got to burst this bubble we're in and get out of the echo chamber.

But if you burst the bubble and get out, then you'll just be depressed looking at everything you hate.

Hmm.

This is more complicated than you suggest. One toxic element of social media is that it's difficult to really notice these subtle effects. It's only in aggregate that the "bad" is really recognizable. E.g., on a surface level, it may feel enjoyable to view happy people living the good life, while subtle jealousy and a sense of inferiority may develop over longer lengths of time.

I find it "funny" that internet was to bring on us the infinity of information, only for it to be curated curated curated to make it relevant. Instead of having curated diffusion, we flipped the logic.

You've got to be a bit careful though. Top "influencers" hire food photographers for perfect shots, they'll pose casually in a $400 sweater etc. It's not a 100% true snapshot of real life.

I completely agree, mine is basically filled with pictures of mountains, climbing, skiing. In many ways it is much more enjoyable then FB for me