Instagram is a free social media platform where users can share photos and videos for people across the globe.

The app officially launched for iOS in October 2010 and already had one million users registered within two months. By June 2018, the app had officially reached one billion registered users. While being used my so many people, the app has faced lots of criticism. It’s described as “draining” because it has been said to worsen teenagers’ mental health and spread inappropriate matter or fake news.

Instagram has its ups and downs. A recent example of a huge down is the implement of reels. Prior to these reels, videos just posted normally on the app and were usually harder to find and watch across the app. This could be an up for content creators and people alike though because these reels appear on people’s feeds and explore pages. This allows them to reach a wider audience and receive more interactions than they would with just normal photo posts. The reason for the uprise of reels is thanks to TikTok. TikTok is one of, if not the biggest social media platform there is right now. Other social media apps have had a decline in registering users, so Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube, and even Facebook have all created their own way of “showing off” their own version of TikTok with reels and shorts.

Instagram does arguably have a smart algorithm system, however. The app asks users to track their activity across different apps to better help them understand what the user likes and what to advertise to them and what their interests are. With this information, Instagram advertises a product that the user may like and displays media about their interests on their explore page. Everyone can benefit from this unless you’re someone who disagrees with letting Instagram track all of your activity on your phone. The app is not recommended to use if the user is under the age of 13, but there’s no way Instagram can actually have you prove your age as you can just enter a fake birthday.

Instagram is available for download on every app store. iOS, Android, Samsung, Google Play, whatever your preference is. It’s an overall average social media app, having its ups and downs but not being lenient towards one or the other.