The most popular Instagram post has 53.6 million, but before Facebook launched the iconic blue thumbs-up in 2009, social media platforms were desolate, like-free zones. Users could browse the content of friends, but the now ubiquitous, universal dash of approval just didn’t exist. Could we soon be returning to these quaint days of the early internet? Instagram is currently trialling invisible likes – which can be seen by the user themselves but not their followers – in six countries, including Australia, Ireland and Japan.
Instagram has pitched the move as an attempt to “reduce pressure” on users – one of several wellbeing tweaks announced at Facebook’s F8 conference. But user health won’t be the only thing on Instagram’s mind. It’s likely that the Facebook-owned platform will be keeping a close eye on the trial to ensure it won’t damage user engagement, or opportunities for making money. So what could the tangible impacts be?
The first question is whether the move will have a significant effect on the mental health of users. A number of studies have tied social media use to a negative impact on wellbeing on teenagers – particularly on teenage girls. And Instagram has been flagged as a particularly troublesome offender. A 2017 UK poll of young people aged 14-24 found that the platform scored worst on aggregated mental health scores across areas such as anxiety, depression, loneliness, bullying and body image.
But it’s not clear whether hiding likes would address these concerns. “I’m sure that the teams involved at Instagram have an idea of why hidden likes might have positive effects, but it’s not clear what their exact goals are,” says Andrew Przybylski, an experimental psychologist and director of research at the Oxford Internet Institute. “Wellbeing is a big concept and I suspect that any possible effects should be targeted to something specific like reducing a sense of anxiety or promoting self-esteem.”
Scientific studies haven’t specifically looked at the effect of likes on mental health, but the desire for validation can negatively impact wellbeing. “Chasing likes has made me feel unpopular, lonely, anxious, unsuccessful and seriously uncool. It has made me question all sorts of things about myself,” says former social media influencer Katherine Ormerod, author of Why Social Media is Ruining Your Life.
"The like button, simple as it was, tapped into a bottomless font of social feedback," says Adam Alter, associate professor of marketing at New York University's Stern School of Business and author of Irresistible: The Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business of Keeping Us Hooked. The like button exploits one of the most evolutionarily hardwired of all human imperatives: the craving for social acceptance.
But what makes seeking out likes so compulsive? “Likes are a form of variable or unpredictable reward, which humans find very appealing,” says Alter. “That's the engine that drives lotteries and slot machines—the potential for big wins that punctuate strings of losses.” The only difference on Instagram, he says, is that for most the pay-off is social, rather than financial.
Will hiding likes really change this desire for social validation and stratifying social hierarchies? Teens are known to be particularly obsessed with likes as a means of tracking social status and mapping the highschool food chain. Often Instagrammers take to private messages to solicit likes from their friends. But tweens have spoken about the pressure to leave comments too, meaning this activity might ramp up in the absence of likes, or close friends might resort to quizzing each other on their like counts directly instead.
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Of course, comparing likes among peer groups isn’t the only Instagram feature that impacts on users’ wellbeing. It’s also the proliferation of aspirational photos, which may painfully highlight the way in which your own body, wardrobe or social life is lacking. Hiding likes might not have the intended impact if it doesn’t change the type of content that is posted there. However, Facebook has signalled that this may actually be an intended consequence of the initiative.
"We hope this test will remove the pressure of how many likes a post will receive, so you can focus on sharing the things you love," Mia Garlick, Facebook Australia and New Zealand director of policy, said in a statement. Although a radical pivot for Instagram, which has become a showroom for our glossiest selves, this aligns with where the platform is heading anyway, with a new flock of younger users posting more natural, less curated feeds. Teens have escaped the drive for perfection by creating multiple profiles, where they can post more freely for smaller circles of friends. For Instagram, a pivot to less high-stakes sharing might actually make people post more.
In the trials, likes aren’t completely eradicated – users can still see their own likes. The reason for this could be two-fold. “It’s a good incremental (safe) bet, because personal feedback is key to engagement with the platform,” says Przybylski. If validation is one of the key features of the app, scrapping liking information entirely could have been too radical a move. “Do away with likes for posters and the engine dies,” says Alter, asserting that some kind of feedback loop is essential in creating desire to post. He points out that Hipstamatic, which offered the same functionalities as Instagram but without the ability to provide feedback met a quick demise.
Direct liking has the added benefit of feeling more personal, by removing the potentially performative quality of dishing out likes. In March 2019, Zuckerberg wrote a blogpost that laid out his vision for a privacy based vision for Facebook. “Facebook and Instagram have helped people connect with friends, communities, and interests in the digital equivalent of a town square. But people increasingly also want to connect privately in the digital equivalent of the living room.” Instagram’s latest move seems to shift the photo-sharing platform further in this direction.
Will we keep liking if its not visible to others? “Empathy and reciprocity expectation can be factors why people expect Likes from those on whom they ‘invested’ previous likes and attention,” says Raian Ali, head of the Digital Addiction Research body at Bournemouth University. “Hiding the likes can also minimise pressure on others who may feel obliged to show loyalty and commitment to their close contacts through liking their posts.”
Another reason for maintaining private likes is more business-focused. Likes are essential fodder for Facebook’s vociferous data-sucking advertising model. The platform is overwhelmingly reliant on its online ad business, which produced 98.5 per cent of its revenue at the end of 2018.
But is losing likes a risk for engagement? In a pre-stories world, Instagram may not have dared to scrap likes (and note, it’s not speaking about anything of the kind for Facebook), but the instantaneous and continuous stream of updates channelled through this popular feature ensures a steady captive audience. Near the end of 2018, stories attracted 400m daily users.
For the billion people who check into Instagram at least once a month, it remains too early to say what the wellbeing effects of a like-free world might be. “Platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and the big gaming companies are doing dozens or even hundreds of experiments on users everyday without our knowledge,” says Przybylski. “It’s good that they’re telling us about this effort but none of these companies share their data with independent scientists. Improving user health and wellbeing is a huge promise and when companies take steps to do this they deserve the kind of scrutiny we give to other kinds of health interventions.”
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
