My view

My experience, my outcomes, my view of the problem

Instagram has become a huge source of communication, sharing updates, income and looking for inspirations. (Hu et al.,2014). This media platform can help to become a popular blogger or influencer, expand the audience and promote your already existed brand. However, with advantages and privileges, always come a bunch of disadvantages. One of those are scams and bullying.

Bullying is one of the many fronts on which social media has been required to act in recent years. Because of fake news, hate messages and comments, there is a decreasing number of calls for regulation of this platform. The persentage of bullying on Instagram has dramatically increased, and, according to the statistics, about 25% of users in 2016 confirmed that they have recently been bullied on Instagram (Zhong, et al., 2016). In 2017, this number increased up to 42% (Ditch the Label, 2017). In 2019, more than a half of teenagers reported that they have been bullied on Instagram. (Stainmetz, 2019). People constantly got nasty comments, messages, which lower their self-esteem and sometimes even led to irreversible consewuences. Teenagers who were under the cyberbullying attackts were 2 times more likely to have thoughts or attepmt suicides. (Hinduja & Patchin, 2018). Because of this issue's rapid growth, Instagram started creating tools, features and promotions, in order to decrease the number of hate.

In 2019 Instagram presented the new function, called "Restrict", which helped millions of people to somehow avoid bullying. Later in Ocrober,2, 2019, they added a "Create Don’t Hate" sticker in Stories, in order to ask people to tell the world how they use their creativity, talents to cope with bullying. (Instagram, 2019).

"We wanted to create a flexible tool that allows young people to speak up, define what’s acceptable in their community and spread positivity on Instagram."- (Instagram, 2019)

Scams have become another major issue while using social media. According to Fletcher, 2020, the losses increased almost up to $120 million in 2020, during the first half of the year, while in 2019 it was almost $135 million throughout the whole year. Scammers are everywhere, but on Instagram they feel like home. Very ofthen the new types, methods and ways for frauding people appear. People are falling for romance, investment, empployement, lottery, loan and other types of scams. (Button et al., 2014). People can hardly understand why they were the victims, and how this has happened.

"And I think that’s one of the scary things is that I haven’t got a clue how they've managed this, to have all those details, you know." - (Button, et al., 2014)

Scammers create fake accounts on Instagram, and use them to trick people into sending them money or personal information. Because of many reports about facing scams, Instagram has decided to prevent and warn people about it. In the Help Centre section people can find the instructions on how to protect themselves from being fooled. (Instagram, 2020). However, it is still impossible to completely get rid of online scams.

This topic is related to the personal experience of mine. I started using Instagram since 2013 and by summer 2016 my audience grew up to 26.8 thousand real followers. I was promoting different local brands, monetized account, and made it a workplace of mine. With the new followers, the new haters were coming. Daily I received dozens of messages and comments with the unreasonable hate, humiliations. I never blocked anyone, however it influenced negatively on mood and self-esteem. I was a victim of cyberbullying.

Once I was a sponsor in a small giveaway, which, eventually, appeared to be a fake one, scammers invaded my accound and Instagram blocked me for "violation of their Terms and policies". It took 6 months for final unblocking and I found out that I lost 22 thousand followers, because my account was accused as a fake one. Now my audience is 8.1 thousand, I am no longer a promoter and do not earn money from commercial posts, however, I did not stop receiving nasty and rude comments. "Restriction" buttom helped me a lot, but this cannot totally prevent the world from hate.

To sum it all up, Instagram has a lot of advantages, but there is always a dark side. Personally, I would recommend victims of both, bullying and scams to pay attention on whom they are in contact with, never reply unkniwn accounts even with over 1000 followers, because they may be bots. It is always better to double check before participating in giveaways, for all, sponsors and competitors. Speaking about bullying, Instagram is trying its best to avoid this issue, however, nothing can stop people from hate. Fakes should not beat the self-esteem, they are just people in masks, so that, try to get through it easily and enjoy the reality, because it is way better than Instagram posts. Do not spread scams and hate, but respect and love!

Sources:

Button, M., Nicholls, C. M., Kerr, J., & Owen, R. (2014). Online frauds: Learning from victims why they fall for these scams. Australian & New Zealand journal of criminology, 47(3), 391-408. https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.1026.6344&rep=rep1&type=pdf

Ditch the Label, 2017. The annual bullying survey 2017. https://www.ditchthelabel.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/The-Annual-Bullying-Survey-2017-2.pdf

Instagram (2019, October, 2). https://about.instagram.com/blog/announcements/stand-up-against-bullying-with-restrict

Instagram (2020). https://help.instagram.com/369001149843369

Fletcher, E. (2020).Scams starting on social media proliferate in early 2020. Federal Trade Commission. https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/blogs/data-spotlight/2020/10/scams-starting-social-media-proliferate-early-2020

Hinduja, S., & Patchin, J. (2018). Connecting Adolescent Suicide to the Severity of Bullying and Cyberbullying. Journal of School Violence, 18(3), 333-346. https://doi.org/10.1080/15388220.2018.1492417

Hu, Y., Manikonda, L., & Kambhampati, S. (2014, June). What we instagram: A first analysis of instagram photo content and user types. In Icwsm. Icwsm.http://149.169.27.83/instagram-icwsm.pdf

Stainmetz, K. (2019). Inside Instagram's War on Bullying. TIME. https://time.com/5619999/instagram-mosseri-bullying-artificial-intelligence/

Zhong, H., Li, H., Squicciarini, A. C., Rajtmajer, S. M., Griffin, C., Miller, D. J., & Caragea, C. (2016, July). Content-Driven Detection of Cyberbullying on the Instagram Social Network. In IJCAI, 3952-3958. https://www.ijcai.org/Proceedings/16/Papers/556.pdf