Between Twitter and Instagram, Instagram will always be my social media of choice. It’s a multi-use, multimedia-allowing platform that can accommodate everyone and their needs.
As an artist, I like how Instagram is visual-focused. It allows for hundreds of thousands of creators to find a voice online and create a community. Thanks to Instagram Reels, it’s not just visual artists who can get their start on Instagram.
Content creators of all kinds can easily and seamlessly promote themselves using the tagging system on clean, simple, and organized pages.
I also love Instagram’s messaging platform. It’s where most of my work and school group chats are. It’s comprehensive and lets me call my friends for free. When you have people that you care about scattered across the planet, it’s incredibly useful.
Posting publicly isn’t for everyone. I like how Instagram makes it a little easier for your posts to stay private. If you tag something it would show up in public feeds, but, if you decide to make your account private, nothing can be shared without your consent.
With Twitter, you run the risk of making one statement and angering thousands. Sure, you can make your account private, but if you do want to speak to the world, anyone can retweet what you say and your tweet’s visibility could spin out of control.
On Instagram, everything is locked down; you can only share posts with so many people at the same time. You can easily curate your page in interesting and aesthetic ways.
Instagram just has everything you need: the ability to speak out, post pictures, post videos, and control the spread of your posts.
Best of all is that it’s not being run into the ground by Elon Musk.
—Clanny Mugabe, Assistant Lifestyle Editor
Instagram is used to create the illusion of the perfect life.
The app creates a space for performative perfectionism. It aims to share art, photos, and videos of your life, but in reality, it presents curated, edited, and “nonchalant” photo dumps which—let’s face it—the user took an hour to pick out.
Instagram creates the allusion that normal, natural life is devoid of flaws, whether that be the I-woke-up-like-this pics from the Instagram model or the friends of yours who are living their best, extravagant life in Paris.
It’s not reality. That Instagram model probably modified their photo in one way or another, and your friends in Paris did not go on that trip for free. Life is complicated, messy, and flawed.
Yet, we don’t recognize this while scrolling through our Instagram feeds. We close the app feeling inadequate. You know what app doesn’t make you feel inadequate? Twitter.
Twitter provides a space absent of pictures and videos about your peer’s lives. Instead, your feed is filled with memes, funny stories, current info—whether that be pop culture, news, politics, or sports—and your friends’ thoughts. You’re kept completely up to date with everything.
Tweets have a 280-character limit, so posts are short and sweet. And you can always get a good laugh out once you’ve scrolled for a bit.
It gets better: you can post whatever you want without worrying if your pic looks good with your feed, or if your post is pretty enough. Instead, you can post whatever’s on your mind (granted it’s appropriate), and it’s normal and known that you probably won’t get any likes or retweets.
You’ll never have to worry about followers, likes, or retweets, because no one cares! Your account is simply for you. Tweet about you, and your thoughts, without the worry of the material things that people use for flaunting on Instagram.
Plus, every meme you see on Instagram was on Twitter two weeks ago. You’ll see the memes first. That’s the real win here.
—Maddie Hunt, Senior Lifestyle Editor
Tags
Art, instagram, Opinion, Photos, Social media, Twitter
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