Should Followers Count?

Why are followers seen as important?

Our Hypothesis

As teenagers, we have seen a lot of Instagram shout-outs for other’s friends and acquaintances to gain more followers. We would like to understand the psychological meaning of why a number can be such a major influence on people’s social lives.

Why does it seem to be important to have a larger number of followers than everybody else? We think it is something to do with popularity and gaining more likes and that followers may be an artificial way of feeling more liked and desired. We think the more followers you have the more well-known you seem to be which connects to being more social. 

Initial search results suggested that teens measure someone’s popularity or validation based on their number of Instagram followers. The more followers you have, the more liked, respected, and admired you are by your fellow peers. Some people even go to the extreme length of purchasing Instagram followers and likes for pictures. The more followers the “better”.

Nowadays likes and followers go hand in hand. A few months ago, Instagram removed some user's access to the number of likes other people have. However, you can still see how many likes your post receives. Research suggests the idea of removing easy access to other people's like-count is beneficial to mental health and results in an overall more positive and healthy space to spend online. As Mossier suggested “the idea is to de-pressurize Instagram”, and make it a space that is more focused on connections, conversations, and community, especially for young people. Mia Garlick, director of policy for Facebook Australia and New Zealand announced that the intention was to “remove the pressure of how many likes a post will receive, so you can focus on sharing the things you love.”

 So how does this relate to followers? Psychologist Emma Kenny states that likes on social media sites, such as Instagram, give you a physiological high, and is a reward cycle, prompting users to keep going back to and worrying about the number of likes that they get. If a teenager’s like-count is not high enough it usually ends with them deleting a picture they have posted. This is unhealthy as teenagers should not be so reliant on other people's opinions.

Getting a low number of likes and followers, in teenagers’ minds, equates to low status and ridicule, especially in a school environment, while having a high number of each equates to popularity. This can contribute to addiction to social media and needing more followers to feel accepted in the school environment.  It is a pure numbers game. The point is to get as many followers as you can and follow as few as possible. They do not care who those people are. It is quantity over quality to most.

From a personal standpoint, we find that many teenagers our age fail to see the dangers of having many followers and not knowing who the majority are. It is important to remember not everyone is who they present to be on social media. If society was more accepting maybe Instagram could be less about comparing numbers and popularity and more of a healthy environment for teenagers to share memorable experiences on.

In conclusion, your follower count is heavily influenced by how much you care about popularity standards and numbers. We believe it should not matter about the number of followers you have as having better quality friends and followers is more important than quantity. Even though studies show you are more artificially popular by society if your Instagram includes a mass number of followers. We believe genuine friends and followers are far more important. If we had the power to change society's morals Instagram could change its ways to not be a number led application.