Homogeneity through Instagram and the Internet

This is a good read for the weekend: an article about how social media, especially Instagram, tends to homogenize the personalities of the people who use it. Freya India begins the article by identifying how image-driven media and influential lifestyles have changed the way people, especially young women, make choices. He calls it “Instagram face” and writes:

His face consists of chiseled cheeks, big lips, fox eyes and a deep tan. An illusion of sexy and supermodel features. The face is not natural, the cartoon is artificially assembled through cosmetics, filters, editing programs, and even surgery, as if girls are endlessly searching for their childhood ideal of beauty: an IMVU avatar or a Bratz doll. Something complete, lifeless, soulless.

-Freya India, it’s more than just an ‘Instagram face’ – by Freya India

However, he goes on to discuss how the problem goes deeper than surface appearances. Girls who use Instagram daily create all kinds of personalities, music tastes, food preferences, home decor, and more. They lose their individuality and become more homogenous, talk the same, sing the same tunes as online influencers, and change their wants and interests. according to what is trending.

This problem is not limited to young girls, although it is perhaps more prominent for that demographic on Instagram. Online personalities influence everyone who continuously digests their content. That’s why we’re all boiling into an unrecognizable mash-up, India writes: the Internet is what shapes us, and we’re all shaped by it together, all at the same time. He continues later in the piece,

But now, online, similar people have almost identical experiences. Bidars get their comments from the same tweets and TikToks. Pundits get their sense of humor from the same memes and viral videos. Girls get inspiration for their looks and fashion from the same Instagram influencers. They were categorized according to our personalities and interests, and then the same ones were presented, again and again, until all the shades and intricacies of our personalities were filtered.

We are a generation that is looking for empowerment and freedom from oppression. We want to live our truth and freely experiment and express ourselves. Yet we allow these programs and algorithms to dictate how we look, how we think, to the point where our personalities become inseparable from the content we consume, the products we buy, the identities that flash upon us. for you The marketplace has become so embedded in our lives that it no longer just decides what we like and what we buy. who are we.

Spending too much time online, consuming content, shapes our personality and outlook perhaps more than we care to admit. Disconnecting from the matrix and reconnecting with ourselves and real relationships with other people may restore us to a sense of individual identity and purpose.