In this case study of Instagram stories, researchers studied the extent to which Instagram story features allowed for sociability of its users and how this social interaction is used to elevate user experience on the Internet/social media. Targeting communities of Human-Computer Interaction and Collaborative Systems, interaction possibilities include viewing, liking, commenting, tagging friends, sharing story posts that are public, and reacting with available emojis. Results showed that users of Instagram liked to see which of their peers reacted to their story, or “express attention” to it before its 24-hour expiration.
I found it really interesting to learn that almost half of participants in the study, being 42% of studied users, did not know how to use, rarely used, or did not know about the existence of all social interaction features offered by Instagram story tools. Participants also expressed that they would like to see improvements made to the app interface to improve the user experience of Instagram stories. It seemed like the least used feature, according to the study, was “going live” on an Instagram story. I found this fascinating because it does reflect users’ overall tendency to demonstrate self-consciousness and a stronger desire to curate content behind a screen instead of being vulnerable and on live camera voluntarily, if they can help it. I know that I would not enjoy using live features on Instagram stories often, because I like to keep my life private most of the time, and so I would rather FaceTime a close friend or family member than expose myself on live camera to loose acquaintances who follow my Instagram account.
Other findings showed that the most used features of Instagram stories included passive, behind-the-scenes actions and behaviors, such as viewing others’ stories or browsing interaction history of others looking at one’s own story. I have found from this article that positive social interactions result from close ties with friends when interacting with stories as opposed to curating content for a larger audience of people someone is not as close to, which reflects how more happiness comes from online interaction with close friends, shown in previous readings. Personally, I like to use Instagram stories once in a while if I have a pretty picture of a landscape, a picture of someone I care about, or a fun memory I want to share for a short period of time, as opposed to a permanent post (that could also always be archived, but lasts on a profile, while a story is far more temporary and reflects real time better).
Hi Anna! I think you raised many thought provoking points from this study. It is always interesting to see a study focus on something that we use everyday, without understanding the positive and negative implications it may have. I am a big fan of Instagram stories, and find myself using them on a weekly basis at least. I too, never opt to ‘go live’ on Instagram, as I personally don’t feel like what I say and do needs to be watched by hundreds of my followers. I think the scary part of going live is that this real time footage can be saved by anyone, so that anything you say or do in that moment can be used against you. In a live setting when you may not be thinking about everything you’re saying, this could be an extremely harmful feature. The Instagram story feature has definitely made me more active on the app, which at times sparks certain moment of self-consciousness. I’ll think “Am I posting too much?” when I lose a few followers, or hesitate to post something I like because I think I will be judged by my followers. At the end of the day, most people will click through your Instagram story without a second thought, so it feels silly to be so fixated on what others think. Overall, I enjoy this feature and I resonated with the results that the study found. I am curious for future studies to dive deeper into the impact that Instagram, Twitter, and Tiktok features have on our emotional and mental health.
I agree with your last point that social media is more interactive when we interact with our friends than when we interact with strangers or unfamiliar people. In my opinion, social software has also enhanced the user experience in this regard, and the connection between people has grown exponentially. In the past, it is hard to open and manage the strangers and friends, but now people can easily make new friends through social media and control their contact, such as through social media is the important contacts is marked as “important”, also can put some nasty people marked as “don’t disturb” mode or restrict some people browse our share personal home page. The main reason behind this is that social media makes it easier to manage different relationships. The Internet and social media have become good stewards of expanding our circle of friends and managing different relationships. Social media can regulate interpersonal relationships well, making it easy to keep in touch with friends. To be specific, through the management of the circle of friends through social media, one can have more friends than in the past, and many risks of making friends can be reduced through social platforms.
This is super interesting as I’m sure we all are personally familiar with instagram stories. They most certainly were not the first, but have really ran with it in a much more integrated way than say, reels or instagram shop. The live features you mention that instagram has makes total sense. In tiktok you aren’t able to go live until you’ve got a substantial following – 1000 I believe. On instagram, you rarely see friends going live, if ever, since nobody really cares what most others are doing. It’s really only as a joke I feel like I see people on instagram live, and the most common user and watcher example I can think of would be tuning into a brand’s stream.