People my age – myself included – are Insta-fanatics. We’ll often post a picture to the ‘gram before setting it loose on Facebook or Twitter, as it seems to be the hottest social media medium of the moment. It’s where we can feel close to our favorite celebrities and post our treasured, simple moments.
I recently had a birthday. As I always do around that time of year, I took out my box of childhood photos. These are photos taken of me by my parents with a real camera, and the film was lovingly taken to be realized in three-dimensional prints. Tangible photos are precious because they can be shredded and lost forever. If you’re cross with someone and you tear apart the photos of you two together, they’re gone for good. Alternatively, something posted to the internet is never truly gone. Maybe that’s why my generation is so obsessed with putting our prized photos on Instagram: the permanence we lack elsewhere.
Everything is temporary for us. We are no longer living in a time of 60-year marriages. We are living in a time of 3 month relationships taken out by Snapchat side chicks. We are no longer safely steering, sans education, into the same careers that our fathers and grandfathers had. We’re spending years floundering between majors in an effort to decide what we’re good at or what we enjoy, and hoping like hell that those things actually match up.
Instagram is where our most cherished moments end up because we know once they’ve hit the internet, they’re eternal. I want the time I spent getting to know my sister better and the time my best friend was effortlessly glamorous in a blazer to be immortalized. I never want to be able to rip these moments apart the way I could a physical photograph. Even the simple moments we’re made fun of for, like the photos of our coffee, could be symbolic for so much more. Maybe someone’s “basic” for posting a photo of their Starbucks, or maybe they got up early and went to the coffee chain to avoid the morning in an unhappy home. Maybe they work two jobs to support three kids, and that coffee is the only peaceful moment they get all day long.
The bottom line is respect the ‘gram. Insta forever.
