ARTS | MATIHIKO | TECH
Written & illustrated by Stella Roper (they/she) | @stellyvision / @dodofrenzy | Arts Editor
Edited by Liam Hansen (they/them) | @liamhanse.n | Editor-in-Chief
Who do I need to dispose of on the Meta team responsible for changing feed posts from square to portrait?
I've always loved the concept of the feed. As I’ve developed my style and preferences within fashion, art and media, I found Instagram to be a place to express myself while also exploring what other people in my life were up to. It felt like being in a safe digital community of people in different areas of my life, many of whom couldn't always be there in person, so curating my feed to highlight those new and developing interests was a great solution to keep in touch. Since I downloaded Instagram in the early 2010s, my interests have developed quite a lot, and so has the Instagram app.
Instagram was founded in 2010 by Stanford graduates Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger. The app was originally called Burbn, a location-based app that allows you to check in on friends and share photos to gain points. Not long after, the name was changed to Instagram, a combination of instant camera and telegram.
As millennials will proudly tell you, the original Instagram logo was not the bright orange and pink one we know today. Before the logo we are currently familiar with, the face of the app was a more humble beige, paired with a bright rainbow stripe down the middle. Inspiration was taken from the '50s 8mm Bell Howell camera. This lasted until 2016, when the current revised version we know today came into existence.
The redesign was an excellent move for Instagram brand-wise, as the beloved retro beige logo became outdated alongside grainy filters and moustache tattoos. This change was a response to the short-form video content boom, a new era of social media such as Snapchat - a personal favourite of one of our politicians - and Vine surged in popularity. As stated in a Shopify article, "The gradient is reimagined with vibrant colours to make it feel illuminated and alive, and to signal moments of discovery."
All of these logo designs aim to emphasise the main point of Instagram: the ability to instantly post photos to the app.
A lot has happened since 2016. Vine rose and fell (RIP), block brows existed, and Instagram, alongside many others, has updated into an all-in-one social media application. Vying for user screen time and data, Social media apps stole and reinvented each other's in-app features. I remember in 2016 when Instagram unveiled the 'Stories' feature, and for a week or so everyone seemed to comment on how they "copied Snapchat."
These days it's commonplace - perhaps even expected - for apps to serve akin to a 9-in-one shampoo, including features for messaging as well as the ability to not only post photos and videos, but also share your location, music taste and whatever Instagram 'Notes' is supposed to be used for.
There was a similar response from companies to the unveiling of the short-form video content platform TikTok, as Instagram and Facebook suddenly had 'Reels' and Youtube unleashed 'Youtube Shorts' to compete with this new era of brainrot/information sharing.
While I could dissect the intricacies of the history of social media platform updates, descending into inevitably conspiratorial rambling, I'd like to circle back and focus on the most recently troubling update to Instagram, changing the beloved feed from square to portrait composition.
Many updates have happened to the app since its beginning - a memorable one being the feature to turn the number of likes on posts off, a move Meta made with the hopes to "give people control over their experience." An important distinction to make is that this update is an option that users can alter depending on their preference, unlike the recent feed recomposition, which has been a permanent change since late January this year.
After a casual stalk on the @Instagram account, I would guesstimate videos/reels take up 98% of the feed's content. This speaks to how highly short-form video content consumption is encouraged by the platform. As Emma Grigoryan from the photography website Fstoppers states, "Instagram’s shift from square to portrait-oriented thumbnails isn’t about redefining how photographers or creators shoot—it’s more about evolving the platform’s layout to reflect current trends." While it's understandable that Meta would align its formatting with how users are more commonly creating and consuming content, in doing so, it removes some control from the user.
As it continues to stray from its original motto: Capture and share the world's moments, Instagram shifts to instead; Capture curated content for the dopamine deficient!
Ironically, it's the video content, not photography posts, which is significantly more effective in decreasing attention spans - a pressing concern for the neural development of our youngest generations. This is particularly harmful to young minds as the stimuli within apps inadvertently train young children’s brains to engage in multitasking behaviours, also known as attention shifting. Such behaviours cause young children to seek instant gratification while subjecting themselves to excessive stimulation. Prolonged exposure to screens profoundly affects the executive functions of a child, particularly concentration and focus. While the impact is extremely significant for youth, there is no doubt that this result is also commonplace within the over-active adult user base of social media platforms.
When countless accessible studies emphasise the negative impacts of prolonged short-form video content consumption, why would platforms continue to shove such content down our throats to the level of permanently altering the app structure?
The answer is your data, ie, money. If it isn't glaringly obvious by now, social media platforms are for-profit, like any other company, and largely do not care about the individual user experience if it isn't affecting their wealth. Dissecting your likes and saves, constructing a customised algorithm made to your taste, all with the mission for you to consume and purchase advertised content.
It's quite unfortunate that online consumption can so easily lead you down a deteriorating rabbit hole of time-wasting attempts at dopamine fulfilment. Once I came to terms with Instagram's grossly composed reality, I realised there are three main points of interest I have in this app.
Visual Composition: As a recent Visual Arts graduate and generally arty busybody since forever, it's no surprise that I value the ability to create visually appealing compositions of memories made on Insta. Having posts organised in a collaged format within my feed makes it accessible for me to look back at the digital gallery consisting of parts of my life. A garden of images to take a leisurely scroll through whenever I feel the pangs of nostalgia.
Connection: To be honest, I couldn't care less what "the internet" would think about anything I put online if I ever found myself trending in some way. By connection, I mean further strengthening the relationships I've already made with those I have clicked with in person. Or, on occasion, connecting with someone online who I then meet in person later.
Discovery: While I can fulfil this desire in some way by literally going outside, social media opens the world up to you - a blessing and a curse. I have interests that may not have been as prevalent without online influences.
After defining my reasons for not having deleted the Devil app, I realised something while mourning the Instagram square feed; If memorializing moments with loved ones and physicalizing them in a visually pleasing archive was what was meaningful to me, I had already been doing that before becoming an Instagram user. The original feed was the scrapbook. The only difference is I can't exactly get my friends to turn on scrapbook post notifications.
After this moment of realization, I managed to find a big empty book that was lying around that my mom never used and promptly started to scrap. As I shuffled around the sheets of coloured paper, patterned washi tape and decently priced photo prints from Warehouse Stationery, I glued and adorned the pages with stickers. In doing so, I think I found a child-like excitement and wonder, a time before I knew how to spell the word because. That similar feeling of happiness and nostalgia I felt scrolling through photos in my phone gallery, looking over the time spent with friends, before posting them online. There's something uniquely special about the scrapbook experience. I soon realized that some materials needed a different glue to stick onto the page, a more adhesive one than others. There's skill to it, and so much more personalisation than an app like Instagram could offer me. By the time I had completed the double spread, I felt like what I imagine people who meditate feel like post-meditation. I think that we hold a lot of stigma for crafts as something only for those who are children or the elderly. But I see no issue with an early adult feeling the need to look back!
When a friend of mine would come over to my house and ask me what I'd been up to I would quickly remember my scrapbooking adventures and bring out this huge book that looks like it would be some kind of grimoire, and open its metal clasp to reveal pages adorned with so much glitter and color. Probably not as much color or movement that Reels provides, but showing someone the scrapbook and noting where everything was found and bought from made me feel a sense of pride and happiness that I hadn’t felt showing some Instagram post, even if it was mine.
As screen times rise and our minds turn into mush, I encourage you to give scrapbooking a go and create a feed that's physical and isn't bound by the restrictions of an app that doesn't have your best interests at heart.
I'll leave you with a badly aged quote to sit with, “Brands, logos and products develop deep connections and associations with people,” Ian Spalter, Instagram’s Head of Design, wrote on Medium in 2016, “so you don’t just want to change them for the sake of novelty."
While this quote referenced the logo change in 2016, it's still pretty funny to think how this mindset was applied to future changes.
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