I recently was informed that I should be on Instagram, so I signed up. I have yet to post anything (though I do have one follower!), and all I can think about is… do I really *need* Instagram?

For those of you who may not know, according to Wikipedia:

Instagram is an online photo-sharing, video-sharing, and social networking service that enables its users to take pictures and videos, apply digital filters to them, and share them on a variety of social networking services, such as Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and Flickr.

…and you can also make the pictures into squares and you can put nifty filters over the images too (instant airbrushing!), but I’m sure you all also knew that.

Do I need this?

On any given day, my view consists of my computer, my dog, images that are NSFW, some airport or airplane somewhere, or …yeah, that’s about it. When I run, I don’t have my phone. When I practice yoga, I don’t have my phone. And when I run with my dog after yoga? You guessed it: no phone.

Given the nature of my work, the “exciting” parts of my life are things I both cannot and do not care to share. For reasons situated in confidentiality and rooted in an abhorrence of general tastelessness, I’m just not gonna take pictures of who I had lunch with.

The sharable images of my life are either mundane or uncapturable. Or inconsequential. But I see people connecting on Instagram and loving it. Plus it’s a hugely significant social phenomenon that, simply by proxy of my sociologist’s eye, I should engage.

I’ll give it a go, but I’m not convinced I need it.

Got a question about the wider social world? Make an appointment for a micro-consultation right here.

(pictured: come find me on Instagram at @drchauntelle – please help me make it more interesting!!)

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