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What Even Is Instagram Without the Likes?
Instagram’s latest like-hiding experiment has me reassessing my social media obsession
I’m addicted to likes. The daily approbations from friends, family, and strangers that dot my social media like so much pepper in my fettuccini nourish me in conscious and subconscious ways. When my numbers are high, I smile to myself, content that I’ve connected with the world in some meaningful way. When the likes are low or nonexistent, I grow anxious and wonder where my audience has gone.
This relationship is probably unhealthy, but I’m not sure I’d want it any other way.
Across all of my social media — Twitter, TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook — I have what might be regarded as an uneven following, and, in general, my engagement expectations align with those follower counts. I expect much more from my Twitter account (94K followers) than I do TikTok, where I have barely 350 followers. But like a parent who claims to love all their children equally, I react to 25 likes on Instagram as I do to 200 on Twitter. My emotional investment is the same, regardless of platform.
When Instagram ran a brief experiment in 2019 of hiding all like counts, I had a viscerally negative reaction. The inability to measure response is anathema to everything I’ve ever…
