Why Instagram is Better than Facebook

Social media is everywhere. You just can't escape it. Criticize it all you want, but social media is morphing the way our society communicates and conducts business. I actually love social media (obviously). Although it often times becomes a substitute for actual human interactions, I think social media is an amazing way for people to express themselves in a low pressure environment. Of course that's only when it's used in a positive manner. I won't even touch the subject of negative use of social media. 

My first interaction with social media goes back to the MySpace days. However, I'm just going to skip over that because I like to pretend that those days never existed... So... My history with social media goes back to my freshman year of college. At the time I was enrolled at a local, private college. I was working at an on-campus restaurant and my colleagues were all excited about The Facebook. They were discussing the rumor that The Facebook might start to include our school. I had no idea what The Facebook was, but my colleagues had informed me that only large universities, like the University of Minnesota, were included in The Facebook. Of course as time progressed The Facebook started to include smaller colleges, businesses, and then it just became open to all. Oh, and I can't leave out that "The" was eventually dropped and it's now just Facebook. (If you aren't familiar with the whole history of the social media empire just watch "The Social Network".) 

Facebook opened me up to a new way of socializing. I could "friend" people I barely knew. I could then read their posts for the day, look at the pictures they uploaded to their page, see what restaurants they frequented. I could even "poke" them and throw a virtual sheep at them! Facebook started from fairly humble beginnings with small colleges just waiting anxiously for their school to be added to the list, to what it is now. Facebook is now an enormous corporation with over 1 billion users worldwide. It has become a regular part of most people's lives. We wake up, brush our teeth, and check Facebook. Everyday.

I find Facebook to be utterly fascinating. I, of course, am an avid user and love to tag myself with certain people or at certain locations just so that all my "friends" know how cool I am. However, I have become so overwhelmed by the use of Facebook as a way for people to air their dirty laundry or start conflict. Most personal matters are meant to be kept private. Most personal matters should not be posted all over your Facebook wall.

Last summer I was introduced to another form of social media, Instagram. I noticed on Facebook that all of my friends were posting pictures via Instragram. When I finally got a smart phone I had to figure out what this whole Instagram thing was. I was obsessed! I was taking pictures of anything and everything and tried out every single filter so that I had the hippest pictures around. Of course after my pictures were posted on Instagram I then had to post them on Facebook so that even more people could be privy to my level of awesomeness.

Of course the novelty of Instagram slowly started to fade. My phone's memory became overwhelmed and I actually had to delete my Instragram app. I took a few months off of Instragram and recently decided to make space on my phone for Instagram again. As I started flipping through the photos of the people I follow, I realized that Instagram is just so much better than Facebook. I could spend all day going through people's photos. Sure some of them are dumb pictures of people hanging out at a bar or self indulgent "selfies". But I look at most Instagram photos as a way to see from someone else's perspective. Ultimately I am seeing the beauty of the world through the lens of others. With Facebook I'm bombarded with words about all sorts of topics. With Instagram I'm bombarded by images that my "friends" took the time to capture and manipulate. I could much rather have the latter.

I would rather see the beauty in this world than read negative words. In a post from a while back I introduced the world to Bodhi the Lionfish Slayer. Of course his name isn't really Bodhi, but he started this awesome page on Facebook called 15 Steps Project. The idea is simple: Take no more than 15 steps from your front door, take a photo, and then post that photo on the page. The inspiration for the page is for people to see the beauty in the most mundane images we might see every single day. The page is filled with photos from all over the world and, to me, does exactly what I see from Instagram. Take a picture of something beautiful. No need to ruin it with words.