Love Hate

The Psychological Toll of Becoming an Instagram Influencer

Instagram may be the worst social media platform for our mental health

Photo by Phil Desforges on Unsplash

Like many 24-year-olds, Alexandra Mondalek, a fashion reporter in New York, found herself obsessing over social media. Her rapidly growing fashion-focused Instagram account, @hautetakes, was gaining attention, with a little more than 1,000 followers, and it was all she could think about. She wasn’t making money from it yet, but Mondalek wondered if she could reach “influencer” status if she kept at it.

“I was putting too much weight into who was viewing my Instagram,” says Mondalek, who started posting photos of the free gifts she received from designers and PR teams, hoping to build her following. “I would worry about how a post was performing instead of making important calls. I felt a certain pressure to make a brand of myself, and there was so much anxiety in that.”

Mondalek decided to quit Instagram in late 2017. Her break lasted for nine months, and she says she felt better than ever during that period. “I didn’t feel like I had to turn out perfect content all the time,” she says. But after nine months, Mondalek decided to quit her reporting job and go freelance. She felt like she needed to rejoin the platform to keep her work connections. Now, Mondalek says she’s back to procrastinating on projects by mindlessly scrolling through photos.

“I’d be lying if I said I could look at an explore page on Instagram and not compare myself to what I see on those pages,” she says. “Someone is purchasing something you can’t purchase or making connections you haven’t yet made. It’s the rat-race lifestyle boiled down into the palm of your hand, and sometimes it feels inescapable.”

Mondalek is not alone in her complicated relationship with Instagram. As of June 2018, Instagram had 1 billion users worldwide, half of whom use the platform to share and view photos every day. Younger adults between ages 18 and 24 are more likely to use Instagram than people over age 34, and recent research published in the journal Psychology of Popular Media Culture has revealed some scary details about how using Instagram can affect our mental health. Compared to other social media platforms like…