The Social Media Lens: Do we only take photos for likes?
Have you ever stopped to consider why you take the photos you take?
I remember reading a social media post about a medical mother whose partner wasn’t comfortable with her posting photos of their child or their child’s surgery scar online (totally fair, by the way). The partner didn’t want his child to be viewed as “different” or sick and to him, her celebrating the scar and anniversary of surgery was showing their kid’s differences. Because of this, she decided she would stop taking photos of her child altogether.
It stopped me in my tracks.
When did sharing photos online become more important than taking photos of your child’s life for your family and your child to have and cherish one day?
The Fading Magic of the Moment
I often wonder whether we have lost the magic of why we take photos or at least why photography started in the first place: to document life.
Before social media, people took photos to have a physical item in their hands to look at and use as a way to hold onto the memory of an event or special occasion. In the era of film photography, rarely if at all, did you see people retaking photos to get the perfect angle, pose, etc., because you couldn’t. You wouldn’t see the end result for a week or longer and that was one of the many magical aspects of film.
Growing up, I remember being mesmerized by my family’s photo albums. I could look at them for hours. I saw a glimpse of who my parents were as people before they became parents, of my siblings and what life was like before I arrived. I looked at moments my family members documented of me as a newborn, infant, and toddler that I have no memory of. I learned who my relatives were through looking at those photos and hearing stories my parents shared.
My mom always said that if there were ever a house fire, the photo albums would be the first thing she’d grab (after the kids of course). I agree with her. I’d grab my photo albums and books and the external hard drives my photos are on.
But how many people have albums anymore? How many people even back up their photos?
Are the majority of the photos you take on Facebook or Instagram? Or “backed up” in the cloud?
Do you even know where they exist?
The Siren Call of Sharing for Likes
It seems as though a lot of the magic of documenting our real life through photos has vanished into thin air, as though social media played a horrible trick on us by creating an addiction for likes and reshares.
I often wonder whether the instant gratification and hit of dopamine we receive when people “like” or “double tap” our photos on social media have completely eradicated the long term need for 1) photos that we took with the intention of having them for our kids to cherish, and 2) real moments, not curated “Instagram worthy” moments.
Studies have shown that the “greater your level of Facebook addiction, the lower your brain volume. MRI brain scans of Facebook users demonstrated a significant reduction in gray matter in the amygdala correlated with their level of addiction to Facebook. This pruning away of brain matter is similar to the type of cell death seen in cocaine addicts.” — The Centre for Humane Technology.
If we are bombarded with images that can significantly change how we see ourselves on a daily basis, what does that do to our own perspective of our lived experiences? Does it devalue how we view our lived experiences? Does it devalue the actual experience?
The ideas that if “it’s not on Instagram, did it actually happen?” and that an image isn’t “Instagram worthy” have created unrealistic and arbitrary criteria people feel they need to live up to. Our addictions to “likes” and approval has made displaying the moment for approval more important than the moment itself.
I know that this narrative has held people back from sharing their experiences on social networking sites because their stories may not “look” like everyone else’s or the “norm”, which is actually a polished, highly produced version of life we’ve come to accept as normal.
Is that leading to people devaluing their life and lived experiences?
Unpolished Moments Deserve to be Documented
I’m lucky in that I didn’t question whether or not to share my time at the Hospital for Sick Children with my 18-day-old son. The vision I had of becoming a mother included holding my newborn and blissfully rocking them to sleep in a calm, quiet nursery at home. It didn’t include being in a hospital with my newborn son connected to medical diagnostic machines, heart rate monitors, and wires; nor did I imagine holding back tears of anxiety and fear in order to sing lullabies to him while the intrusive and harsh sounds of the hospital shocked every nerve in my body. But that was my experience and I shared it loudly and widely.
For so many people, parents or not, the moments they know and live look nothing like the “moments” they see on their social media feeds, but they still feel they need to live up to these unrealistic, unreal “moments”. I use quotations here because so much of what we see as “moments” aren’t real life — they are filtered, curated, and unrealistic.
I do believe there are aspects of how we share on social media that have helped us in positive ways. We can learn about other cultures and use images posted by people across the world to teach our children. We can connect with long lost relatives or friends. We can learn new skills from someone on the other side of the globe.
We can learn about other people’s lived experiences that do not look like ours, which is a beautiful and magical thing. Things get muddled when we start to devalue other people’s lives and experiences because they look (and are) different from what an algorithm has trained us to believe is good or better.
I believe that all aspects of our lives are worthy of being documented: the mundane, the routine, the happy milestones, but also the difficult, down-on-your-knees praying, life-changing moments. But even I still question how much or how little to share about my son’s journey, not just because he’s a child, but because it doesn’t look like everyone else’s. I don’t question whether it’s “Instagram worthy” enough because I’ve tossed that narrative and perspective out the proverbial window. Instead, I question whether people can stomach looking at some of the images and whether I want to expend the energy on social versus with my son. The hesitation isn’t about sharing our journey because it’s different, the hesitation is about whether other people have the fortitude to accept this as our normal. And sure, it’s sometimes hard, but I wouldn’t change it for the world.
It’s as though we’ve lost our ability to make critical decisions. We’ve stopped questioning whether the actions we are taking online are safe or healthy.
If we have become so lost in the way we document our lives and are being led by a profit making AI machine that we have forgotten to even ask ourselves, “why am I posting this?”
There is a dichotomy here because it’s two sides of the same coin: sharing as the end goal of documentation. Photo albums were shared proudly at family get togethers. Shit, people would make slide projections of their family vacations to show at dinner parties. Books are created, art installations, photo galleries, I could go on.
Life doesn’t just happen on social media with perfectly posed photos and colour coordinated everything. I think the global Covid-19 pandemic has shown so many of us that life is messy and fragile. That embracing it all and documenting the depths of it all is more important than the shallow selfies — which I also take and share — that we have been conditioned to post.
Have you stopped to ask yourself whether you are sharing a photo out of a mindless habit formed by an AI algorithm or are you taking the photo truly as a way to document a moment in your life for a family member or yourself?
Next time you are about to post a photo on a social networking site, stop and ask yourself why you are sharing it.
- If you don’t know why you’re driven to share it (maybe it is out of a mindless habit you formed based on manipulation and algorithms), can you pause and reconsider whether it needs to be shared?
- Is it because you feel pressured to make your life look as shiny and polished as the top influencer’s feed?
- If it is to share with friends and family members, could you share it via email or print it and create a special gift to give?
- If it is to show off your newly acquired photography skills, could you create a website gallery to house your images?
The advances of digital technology are moving so quickly and seemingly making life easier, but I feel we can all take some cues from old and new aspects of photography. Are we able to both retain the specialness of preserving a moment and appreciating the ease of sharing? Can we be okay with how our life looks in this moment and resist the urge to twist it into what we think others want to see?
Documenting our lives, through whatever medium you chose, ought to bring us closer to our lived experiences, our loved ones, and ourselves instead of creating tension, anxiety and competition.
The way we choose to do that and how we choose to share the essence of our individuality and unique lived experiences should and will evolve over time. Therefore, it will look different for everyone, which is what we ought to celebrate.
The next time you snap a photo to post online, pause and ask yourself, “who is this photo for and why am I sharing it?” You may be surprised by your answer.
