We did (almost all of) it for the 'Gram.

Last week, on a text string a good friend of mine asked, “what will the 2010’s be remembered for?” I also saw a similar conversation taking place on Reddit, and I carried the conversation forward to drinks with some different friends last weekend. I think it’s an interesting exercise, and as I continued to discuss it, I became more and more convinced of my answer.

This is the Instagram decade.

From its founding in 2010, to its current incarnation as the darling of the social media world, Instagram has led or represented more cultural conversations, either as literal representation or too apt metaphor, than any other thing you could possibly use to describe this decade.

As I thought through my answer, I broadly sketched out three areas where I think Instagram represents the United States in the '10s: as one of the most used tools in the digitization of our relationships, as a proxy for the valley and technology, and as both a tool and proxy for the change in how we perceive ourselves, and our society. Not every line of thinking will hold up under the microscope, but in total I think that Instagram has fully infected human behavior, for better and (mostly) for worse.

Wait, but first, let me take a selfie.  

If you didn’t know, people are kind of obsessed with Instagram. Way back in 2018, people spent an average of 53 minutes per day on the app. I’d be willing to bet that number has gone up. But it’s not just time spent that makes this the Instagram decade, it’s how the app has changed human interaction IRL. What do I mean? Well...

Instagram didn’t invent selfies, but it damn sure popularized them. It may have only been a matter of time once smartphones took over, but the first truly mobile social networking app has to get its fair share of credit here. Look at the Google Trend history of the term “selfie:”

Nonexistent from 2004 until 2012, and now a normal part of everyday life/culture. I mean, look at what Elizabeth Warren is doing after every single event she runs. It’s a “selfie line,” not a meet and greet!

Prior to Instagram, people didn’t photograph their food on the reg. It really just wasn’t a thing that happened. Now, it’s an almost expected behavior and rite of passage when trying a new restaurant or dish. How in the world did we get to a place where we’re so convinced other people care about what we’re about to eat?! Or, better/worse yet, Instagram has changed the reasons people travel and the places they travel to!

While we’ve had messaging within social networks before, we never “slid into someone’s DMs,” or at least we didn’t say that when we did. We had likes across all social networks, but none of those other platforms researched the negative impact likes had on peoples happiness and felt compelled to hide them, did they?

Lastly, from an advertising perspective, we discuss “Instagram brands” like Allbirds and Casper, not “Twitter brands” or even “Facebook brands.” It seems as though, and I acknowledge this is a subjective opinion, that Instagram did more to normalize social media e-commerce than any other platform.

Instagram has literally changed the way we interact with each other, online and offline. That's a pretty big deal.

Instagram is Silicon Valley.

For my argument, it is convenient that IG was founded in 2010. It was founded as the first truly mobile social network. It needed all the elements the smartphone provided to survive and thrive. And thrive it has, with over a billion monthly active users in 2019. So, it kind of checks of a lot of boxes of what major technology changes have occurred this decade.

BUT WAIT: why isn’t this the decade of the iPhone? It could be! The iPhone is super popular. People love it. It’s world changing-ly innovative. Checks a lot of boxes for sure. I just don’t think it’s a strong enough proxy for broader society. But if you wanted to build out this argument, and it was compelling, I’d be first to “like” it. But, for me, IG at least head nods to the mobile revolution by virtue of its very existence, and it lets me explore other reasons why we’re the #IGDecade.

Why do I see IG as the singular answer, above these and other changes? In addition to how it’s changed human to human interaction, I also think it best showcases how technological innovation has gone this decade.

IG was super innovative when it was founded and grew like a weed. Wasn’t profitable, but sold for a TON of money to Facebook, and its major innovations since have been copycats of other company’s tech (hey Snap). It’s now part of one of the five giant tech companies that control everything (Facebook, Google, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft). That control has become so absolute this decade I think any answer to how people will remember us has to acknowledge it. 

And… let’s face it: Instagram is the quintessential example of putting up a front. No matter how bad things might be, 99.9% of the things you see on Instagram are great. They are beautiful. It’s like a beautiful fa?ade slapped in front of a decaying building. That building is the Facebook company itself, which feels more and more rotten to the core. I mean, they just paid a $5 BILLION dollar fine. Plus election interference. But, cool, cool, let’s shovel more money (brands) and data (consumers) over there. They totally value privacy and people.

Unfortunately, the decaying building isn’t just Facebook. It’s also us. Society. The country. I mean, broadly the economy is doing great, right? Unemployment low, the stock market high! The in-feed pictures from the United States look fantastic. All sea-to-shining-sea. But what’s going on behind the scenes is significantly worse, and we're ignoring it because of the pretty pictures. More on this in a bit.

Instagram is a (black) mirror into our society, and our psychology

I am not the smartest man, nor particularly well read, although I try to be. So, when discussing my Instagram theory with a friend, I had no idea the particulars of “Front Stage and Back Stage” theory, proposed by Erving Goffman all the way back in 1959. But it’s cool, and I think that if this theory had an id (apparently my pop psychology ends with Freud), its name would be Instagram.

Instagram gave us a global audience to present our best selves, or even idealized (and fake) versions of ourselves. And then it turns around and gives us a limitless supply of other idealized visions of humanity to compare ourselves against. It’s all perception, no reality. It’s all “front-stage.” I think this is very bad. I’m not alone in my thinking.

I mean, look, filters are cool. They make us all feel like professionals. Like artists. But we are literally presenting a filtered view of our lives out to world. And we don’t control the scale. We don’t control the environment that people consume our content. And I think context is important.

The more time we spend engrossed in technology, the less time we spend having other interactions. And the more of this tech time that is dominated by fake visions of how perfect everything is, the less adequate we feel, and the less connection we feel to people around us. Without that connection, we don’t empathize as well.

This whole system has given rise to a class of digital “haves,” that we’ll call influencers. They look prettier than us. They travel to cooler places. They do cooler things. Their houses are nicer. Their kids have the cutest clothes and ALWAYS say the darndest things. Are some/all of these things true? Maybe! Probably! But, open up the discover tab on your Instagram. Is the world really filled with just nothing but these A+ objects and experiences, everywhere except for where I am, and in everything except for what I’m doing? We know in our brains that’s not true, but it’s proving harder and harder to ignore the FEELINGS.

It’s not just about us, but about U.S.

Why does this Instagram analogy carry through in my view of our society? Because I see similar cracks in our country’s front stage and back stage behavior. There are lots of good things happening around us, and you’ll hear people shouting about those. Declining unemployment rates, near record levels in the stock market. Declining drug use. Declining crime rates. Improving diversity and inclusion. These are all great! There are many more great things, and I am happy for all of them!

But just as I made the fa?ade vs. foundation point earlier, I think these really good things are just societies in-feed posts, telling itself and everyone else how great we are. “America is the greatest nation on Earth” type stuff, which, not true, but fine! I love it here. It’s definitely MY favorite place to live, but whatever.

It’s the other stuff that’s going on, the stuff that gets glossed over, that represents the back stage behavior of our country. Now, to be fair, we do TALK about these things, we just don’t DO very much about them. You know what I’m talking about: rising inequality, opioid addiction, declining life expectancy, increased polarization, obesity, depression, declining views on the quality of life for future generations, climate change…

Any one of these negative things may end up defining our generation, but my sincere hope is that we get a lot of these right in the 2020s, and that becomes the narrative. I think, that when we look back on the 2010s, we’ll see a society that faced some real challenges, but didn’t actually face them. We punted on a lot of big questions, while simultaneously showcasing all the cool new experiences we were having (AUTONOMOUS VEHICLES am I right?!)

Hopefully, someday we’ll look back and laugh at how superficial we were in filtering all of our experiences and in ignoring the very real pain and challenges we faced as individuals and as citizens. Hopefully we’ll get better about integrating technology into our lives in a positive manner and showcasing our lives online in a meaningful and additive (not addictive) way.

Hopefully this great foundation of technology will give us a new launching pad for even more impactful innovation, and for increased competition and better outcomes in the business world.

But regardless of where we end up, I just can’t take a retrospective of this decade without acknowledging the overpowering impact Instagram has had on all of us. That’s why I’m calling it the #IGDecade. What do you think?