Every once in awhile while stalking your ex on social perusing the internet you’ll stumble upon a scientific study that makes you think “Did science really need to allocate valuable time and resources to this? Shouldn’t we be like, studying climate change or some shit?” Well, one such study just came out from LendEDU, and you’ll be literally shocked by their conclusion. Are you ready? Are you seated? You’re not gonna believe this but, Instagram is the most narcissistic social media platform.
Wow. Groundbreaking. I think I know who should get the Nobel Prize this year.
What could have possibly brought LendEDU to this earth shattering conclusion? Well, a poll of 3,701 current college students showed that 64% of students surveyed named Insta as the “most narcissistic” social media platform, with Snapchat coming in second at a pathetic 15%. Wow. An app that literally only exists to share photos of your own face and gather likes on said photos is narcissistic? I can’t believe it. The study, which, TBH, I’m not convinced counts as a “study,” then goes on to come to another stunning conclusion: people use Instagram because they want likes on their photos.
Please excuse me while I catch my breath as I have been thoroughly shook by this revelation.
Another survey of 3,869 current college students found that when asked “Do you make an intentional effort to like people’s Instagram posts who like yours?” that 67% of respondents said “Yes, it’s unspoken Instagram code,” in comparison to 33% of participants who are fucking liars.
All of this begs the question—who conducted this fucking survey? What questions did this survey, which presumably took many hours, even weeks to complete, answer that just simply logging into Instagram and looking at your feed—or just like, possessing a general understanding of how Instagram works—couldn’t have answered for you?
All this study needed was for one of these old-ass scientists to borrow his daughter’s phone for five minutes. Do you see 100+ selfies with a thousand likes and comments that just say “GORG!!!”? Then I think it’s safe to assume that Instagram is narcissistic. End of study.
Finally, the surveyors asked a group of 9,477 current college students if they “know someone who deletes Facebook or Instagram posts if they don’t get enough likes?” to which 78% of the participants said “yes,” and were probably talking about someone that they knew very well, like themselves. 22% of respondents answered no to this question, meaning that 22% of the people surveyed are either totally clueless or, again, fucking liars.
Again, a whole team of scientists were paid to come to these conclusions.
The final paragraph of this study says, ”The overwhelming majority of social media users do not post pictures to genuinely share their experience with others. Rather, the only reason behind posting is to take up sufficient likes. Millennials would rather hide their lives from the public than live with the agony of having an unpopular post on their profile.”
Wow. Way harsh Tai. I mean, again, this isn’t anything we didn’t already know, but it seems pretty fucking sad when you see it all laid out like that. Not that anyone ever for one second thought you posted that pic of yourself on the beach in Cabo to “genuinely share your experience.” We all know that shit is just to get likes and validation on your summer body, but nobody is going to say that. That’s the real “unspoken rule” of Instagram. We all know it’s just for likes, we just pretend it’s not.
Sooooo…like….can I get a scientific grant for my contributions to this study now or….?