Instagram

My Experience with Instagram

I’ll be honest, I didn’t want another app on my phone. But my mom kept bugging me for pictures of my daughter’s soccer games, and texting them one by one was driving me crazy. So I gave Instagram a shot a little over a month ago. Setting up an account was quick, and I found my sister-in-law within a few minutes. That first Saturday afternoon, I posted a video of my daughter scoring a goal—just raw footage, no filter. The next morning, I had 14 likes and a comment from my aunt in Florida. It felt nice, for free. But then I noticed the app keeps showing me ads for things I looked at on Amazon, which is creepy. And I spent way too long one Tuesday night trying to figure out why my posts weren’t showing up for certain friends—turns out my account was set to private without me realizing. Overall, it does the job for sharing family updates, but it’s definitely designed to suck you in and sell you stuff.

Features Worth Noting

The main reason I stick around is the Stories feature. I can post a quick 10-second clip of my kid’s art project, and it disappears the next day. No clutter on my main feed. That’s smart for a free app. The direct messages work fine too—I send a photo to my mom and she gets it instantly without me having to attach it to five separate texts. I also like the carousel posts where I can swipe through multiple pictures of a birthday party in one post. That saved me from spamming everyone. The explore tab is a mixed bag—sometimes it shows me cute dog videos, other times it’s a sponsored post for teeth whitening kits I don’t need. I’ve never used IGTV because who has 20 minutes to watch a video on their phone? And the filters are decent for free, but I don’t think they’re worth paying for some subscription upgrade if they ever lock them behind a paywall. My daughter tried the boomerang feature once and thought it was hilarious, so that’s a win.

What Needs Work

Here’s my biggest pet peeve: the notifications are relentless. I turned them off for everything except direct messages, but the app still sends me a push saying “so-and-so posted a story” every few hours. I don’t need that. Also, the app is a battery hog. On my iPhone 14, I can watch Instagram for 10 minutes and lose 8% battery. That’s ridiculous for a free app that’s mostly just showing pictures. Another thing—I contacted support because I couldn’t figure out how to remove a tagged photo from my profile. The response took four days. I get that it’s free support, but come on, four days? By then I had already figured it out myself by googling. And the app keeps trying to push me to add a phone number for “security.” I’m not comfortable giving you my number, Instagram, just let me use an email. Lastly, the algorithm feels manipulative. It intentionally shows me posts from people I barely follow instead of my actual friends because it wants more engagement. That’s not helpful.

Pricing

Instagram is free to download and use. You can create an account, post photos, send messages, and use all the basic features without spending a cent. That’s great for someone like me who watches every dollar. However, they offer in-app purchases for things like badges in live streams and boosting posts. I’ve never spent a dime on either. If you want your post to reach more people, you have to pay for an ad boost. That’s how they make money off regular users like me. I don’t like that my organic posts get shown to fewer of my followers unless I pay up. It feels like a bait and switch. But if you’re just using it to share cat pictures with family, you’ll never need to open your wallet.

Developer Notes

The app updates constantly. Like every week there’s a new version. Half the time the update note says “bug fixes and performance improvements,” but then my layout changes and I have to relearn where the button for DMs went. Developers seem focused on copying TikTok with endless scrolling short videos, which I don’t use. I wish they’d spend time fixing the battery drain instead. Also, the app now shows how many times you’ve re-watched a story, which is creepy and I hate it. They clearly put effort into keeping you glued to the screen, not making it a useful tool. I respect the work they do, but I’m not their target audience. I’m a mom who wants to share a photo and log off, not a 20-year-old influencer trying to go viral.

Security & Privacy

I keep my account private because I don’t want strangers seeing my kids. That was easy to set up in settings. But I’m still nervous about how much data Instagram collects. They know my location from where I post, my contacts from when I synced my phone book once, and what I browse online because of those targeted ads. I saw a setting for “two-factor authentication” but I didn’t enable it because I don’t trust handing over my phone number. There’s also a “activity status” thing that shows people when you were last online, which I turned off immediately. For a free app, you’re the product, and that feels icky. I wouldn’t recommend a teenager use this without privacy settings locked down tight. The fact that they ask for your birthday when you sign up is weird too—why do they need that? I just faked a year.