Earlier this fall, while riding the subway, I overheard two friends doing some reconnaissance ahead of a party

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Instagram Is Over

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They were young and cool intimidatingly so, dressed in the requisite New York all-black, with a dash of Y2K revival and trying to figure out how to find a mutual acquaintance online. 

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Instagram Is Over

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Does she have Instagram?” one asked, before adding with a laugh: “Does anybody?” “I don’t even have it on my phone anymore,” the other confessed.

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Instagram Is Over

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It would have been unheard of for these 20-something New Yorkers to dismiss Instagram even a few years ago; it would have been a pompous lifestyle decision that people would have regretted bringing 

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Instagram Is Over

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the party they were going to attend. But now, it comes as no real surprise. Today, scrolling through Instagram involves sifting through a number of sponsored posts from companies 

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Instagram Is Over

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suggested Reels from people you don’t follow, and the occasional picture from a friend that has been posted previously but has only just surfaced. It isn’t what it once was. 

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Instagram Is Over

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Gen Z’s relationship with Instagram is much like millennials’ relationship with Facebook: Begrudgingly necessary,” Casey Lewis, a youth-culture consultant who writes the youth-culture newsletter After School, told me over email. 

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Instagram Is Over

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They don’t want to be on it, but they feel it’s weird if they’re not.” In fact, a recent Piper Sandler survey found that, of 14,500 teens surveyed across 47 states, 

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only 20 percent named Instagram their favorite social media platform (TikTok came first, followed by Snapchat). 

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Instagram Is Over

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Simply being on Instagram is a very different thing from actively engaging with it. Participating means throwing pictures into a void, which is why it’s become kind of cringe.  

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Instagram Is Over

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To do so earnestly suggests a blithe unawareness of your surroundings, like shouting into the phone in public. 

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Instagram Is Over

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In other words, Instagram is giving us the ick, which is the sensation you get when a crush or love interest does something subtle but noticeable—like wearing a fedora—that instantly and permanently turns you off. 

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Instagram Is Over

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