When Instagram first burst onto the scene, gaining 1 million users just two months after its 2010 launch, some wondered why. After all, if a person wanted to share photos, which at that point was all Instagram offered, they could easily attach images in an email and send to friends and family. So, what was the attraction with Instagram?

 

What many didn’t understand was that Instagram (and other social media) isn’t about being social, it’s about being media. Social media is a place to perform not connect — Instagram, unlike email, gave users the chance to reach an audience well beyond their friends and family.

Instagram did indeed allow some to attain a vast audience they would never have otherwise attained. However, it also taught many more a painful lesson – relatively few people cared about what they had to say or show.

Social media platforms are dominated by a small number of users who get all the views – 87% of Instagram users have fewer than 1,000 followers, 77% have fewer than 500. This is a major if not the major reason social media makes large percentages of people unhappy. 

It may be the case that adage aficionados are uncertain about the origins of the phrase “Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt," but let there be no doubt that we (just now) originated the phrase “Better to not post and be thought unpopular than to post and remove all doubt.”