People nowadays, especially millennials, tend to gauge their popularity and public opinion on “followers” and the number of “hearts” or “likes” they get on social media posts. It is common knowledge that the more likes you get, the more attention your posts receive. However, can you imagine an Instagram account without seeing the number of “likes?” It is happening right now in Canada.

Instagram started testing a new feature hides the number of likes a post gets. The only person who can see the number of likes is the account holder.

Canada is serving as the breeding ground for this experiment to see if it will have a positive or a negative impact on IG users. Instagram developers said this is still in its trial stage and they are unsure if it will be spread to other users in other countries.

Hiding the number of likes from public view is part of what they call a “well-being package,” which is an effort to make Instagram less toxic and harmful to its users, especially in terms of mental health.

Since people tend to worry about the number of likes they get and feel it is some sort of competition, developers said they want people to focus more on content and not the number of likes.

The shift may also be related to a 2017 UK survey that found Instagram was the “most detrimental to young people’s mental health and well-being.”

A test group in Canada is currently working with it (I am not one of them). Currently, I cannot see the number of likes on accounts I am following but I am not particular with the number of likes I receive on my PERSONAL account. Public pages, such as those handled by celebrities, political figures, influencers, fan accounts, and business pages, are greatly affected considering engagement with followers is a very important factor to their success.

Personally speaking, as an advocate for mental health as well as a holder of a PUBLIC page, I am supporting this new initiative. I can see the effect it will have on my public page considering that the number of likes really helped boost the status of my account. However, what’s really important in our society right now is not the number of likes our posts gets but the well-being of our mental state. People tend to worry their posts do not get a lot of likes and form a silent competition against other pages.

I have felt bad when my public posts don’t get the likes I expected because I spent long hours to produce great content for my followers. When I first got a post that reached 500 likes (which is still considered low), I felt elated. I thought likes were everything and I started to strive for thousands more likes. The more likes you get, the more successful your page seems to be… then the stress starts. You compete for more and more likes, which can be very stressful and harmful to your mental health.

Right now, even if I can say that the public page I’m running is stable and well-followed, I am still supporting this new initiative from IG to push for a better mental state for all social media users. I can say that I am now good at not stressing myself out because of Instagram (and other social media, if I might add) and, since I’ve experienced the negativities first hand, I don’t want others to feel the same toxicity as I did then.

Let’s all remember, at the end of the day, what’s really important is how well we connect with our followers without jeopardizing our mental health. Photos and videos are there to be shared for people to see whether they hit the heart button or not./WDJ