Is Instagram ruining your life?

Jan 21—2026

Instagram grew very fast as a social media platform and overtook many of its rivals including facebook in usage. In India, the affordable access to the internet and the addictive nature of short form contents made its growth even more explosive.

Though the usage has increased, there are some advantages and disadvantages or harms which come with it.

Advantages

1. Easy for content creators to gain audience.

2. Allows content creators to earn money.

3. Allows people to take it as a side hustle or a source of income for those who are unemployed.

4. Allows brands to promote their products. Powerful platform for small businesses, creators, and professionals to grow visibility.

5. Allows people to connect with their friends and family. It makes it easy to broadcast any event or occasion to friends and family.

6. Provides people with unlimited access to entertainment. Short form content can offer relaxation and momentary enjoyment.

7. Also serves as a source of news and response of people to that news.

8. Many tutorials, especially cooking/gardening videos, have come up which are informative and useful.

Disadvantages

1. The short form of videos are addictive and time consuming. You keep scrolling and forget to keep track of time. Unlike the long form videos where you know the duration of video and when video ends you have the sense of having completed the task.

2. Since you keep scrolling through reels, you do not stick to a single topic. Infinite scrolling leads to excessive and unconscious usage.

3. The recommendations are random but usually linked to what you watched earlier. Recommendations do not change unless you search for something different.

4. Contents with same type of views or opinion being shown again and again tends to create a generalization based on a single occurring. This changes your opinion and behaviour.

5. The news shown is usually in the form of headlines and does not tell the complete story. This affects your opinions and decisions based on only the headlines.

6. It makes you feel the trauma which you never actually suffered. It changes narratives into beliefs for many people.

7. Curated lifestyles promote false standards of success and beauty.

8. There is no regulation of quality of content.

9. Short reels can impair focus and deep thinking.

10. Late night usage affects sleep quality and circadian rhythm.