Once done by celebrities, it has now become a habit for young people who want more control over their image.
Since 2013, Instagram has introduced the ability to archive your posts, that is, make them invisible to other users who visit your profile without permanently deleting them, with the ability to make them visible again at any time. However, in recent years, the feature has become much more widely used than in the past, both by celebrities and corporate profiles, and among younger generations, who tend to archive, or even periodically delete, published photos in order to maintain greater control over themselves. -the perception that other people experience when they visit their profile.
The trend, especially among celebrities, is not new: already in 2014, one of the most famous photographers on the platform at the time, Richard Coci Hernandez, decided to delete almost all of his photos, explaining that “the photos that I post on Instagram are an evolution of who I come from a background as a photographer, and there were a lot of posts on my profile from a time when my work was less mature.” However, the first case that really sparked discussion was in August 2017 the case of singer Taylor Swift, who, in addition to deleting all her photos from Instagram, also stopped following everyone and deleted her profile photo. This move attracted media attention and curiosity just before the announcement of the new album. Reputationafter the singer made few public appearances for several months.
Since then, dropping Instagram posts due to a big announcement or after a bereavement or breakup has become a relatively common practice among those with public accounts. Actress Blake Lively did this in 2018 ahead of the film’s launch. Small favor; singer Zayn Malik also in 2018 after breaking up with his girlfriend, model Gigi Hadid; singer Jennifer Lopez announces a new album in 2022 (the first since 2014); This summer, fashion brand Versace will unveil its Fall 2023 collection campaign and make the brand’s graphic design more consistent on social media.
However, celebrities aren’t the only ones who have very tight control over what’s visible on their Instagram profiles. Over the course of several years, especially young people between the ages of high school and their first years of university, have adopted an approach to what they show online that is very different from that of previous generations, especially on Instagram. If people who have used the platform from the very beginning, in the early 1910s, think of Instagram as a photo album that can be flicked through to remember what they thought was important or interesting a few years ago, then it is very rare that it shows up for more than a few handfuls of photos . In fact, often their profiles are completely empty, and the photos they post are archived or completely deleted with some frequency, even though their profiles are not public and therefore visible to everyone with Instagram, but are private, meaning only visible to people. who the account owner has allowed to view the profile.
Part of this is purely an aesthetic issue: many young people find that a profile with too many photos is simply unattractive to look at, and archive old posts to maintain some order. But more broadly, it is an approach that reflects a clear difference between the way social media is perceived by young people and previous generations.
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“We mostly use Instagram as a ‘showcase’,” explains Anna, an 18-year-old high school student from Perugia. “One of the first things you do when you hear about a new person is go and look at their profile. We get an idea of people through social networks, and therefore the profile is considered to reflect what the user wants to pass off as an idea of themselves. The more photos, the more vulnerable you are. We delete photos because they no longer represent us, not because there are “too many” of them on a profile. They are deleted because they no longer fit the image you want to convey to someone who doesn’t know you and is viewing your profile.”
There is a widespread idea that an Instagram profile should not be an archive of experiences and adventures (or simply moments in which a person feels especially beautiful), but only a space where you can share what you think and want. at a certain period with the intention of eliminating everything as soon as something changes.
“Older generations grew up on platforms where they upload entire photo albums of parties, which are probably still around if you look at Facebook. But today’s teens don’t see their posts that way: they want to capture a single moment, not save it as a souvenir for the future,” explains journalist Amelia Tate, who has been writing about social media for years. “Millennials are at a stage where they start to feel nostalgic and look back at their social profiles to relive some memories. But for those still growing up, the nostalgic element doesn’t exist yet: I wouldn’t be surprised if, in a few years, some of them will be shocked to realize they’ve lost some of their memories.”
This desire to maintain much tighter control over how a hypothetical public might perceive itself on social media corresponds with another widespread trend, and not just among young people. And that means you’ll be able to share a lot more information in Stories, the section of Instagram where posted content disappears after 24 hours, or in more select private circles like “green stories” for close friends on Instagram, private messages or WhatsApp groups that are your public channel.
“I don’t want to be perceived by people who are not close to me: and for people who care about me to be aware of events, there are stories for close friends,” says twenty-four-year-old Emma from Treviso. “I look at other people’s profiles just to get involved with their business and assume other people are doing the same thing, and frankly, I don’t want them to do that to me.”
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