A new wave of Instagram challenges has arrived

During my self-isolation, not a day has gone by where  I have not seen a new challenge pop up in my Instagram feed. 

It started with drawing foods, then it moved onto women posting photos to lift themselves and other women up, then it was push up challenges and it slowly moved to posting a picture with the caption ‘until tomorrow’. It seemed like this self-isolation thing didn’t even last two days before people started to do these challenges, and I have some mixed feelings about them. 

I follow a lot of different people on Instagram — 643 different people to be exact, and something that I enjoyed about following a variety of different people is that I get different content from each of them. So, when I go on Instagram and I see the exact same thing from every person I follow, I get annoyed and frustrated, but I don’t think that people are doing this intentionally. 

We are currently living through a pandemic, which has required us to socially distance and live our lives differently than we would have a month ago. I know personally that I used to post on my Snapchat or Instagram stories a lot, because I always thought I was doing interesting things and I wanted other people to see what was happening in my life. I know that a lot of other people used their Instagram in the same way — they wanted to connect with people.

My take on Instagram challenges is that people are doing it for two reasons: firstly, everyone is bored out of their minds, and I don’t blame them. Secondly, it is a way to push out content and communicate with people you might not be talking to during isolation. 

I haven’t had a face-to-face conversation with anyone besides my mother and sister for the past 10 days. Yes, I have been facetiming people and texting, but it just isn’t the same. I feel like I have not been socially stimulated in a long time, so I can understand how doing an Instagram challenge might help people feel connected to the world.

While I do get annoyed with Instagram challenges, it is a good way for people to live their lives as normally as they can during this time. I mean, when Instagram first started gaining popularity, a lot of people did challenges — and there were things like ‘man crush Monday’ or ‘selfie Sunday,’ so what makes these different? 

I guess the fact that our demographic has grown up and has started to post more content specific to them changes things. But if we can get through middle school seeing all our classmates posting their #MCM , I think we can make it through the next couple of weeks with people coming up with new ones.