For the nearly 1 billion worldwide Instagram users, there are many different photo personalities. Read more to find out which one matches you best.
Most of you out there reading this have at least two social media accounts. From Instagram to Facebook to Snapchat to Twitter…the list goes on and on. One of the biggest sources of social media is Instagram, the smart phone-based app which allows users to post a single square photo or short video of their life. Its like a snippet of someone’s day or life. Users can select filters to apply to their photos, turning even the most basic of picture snappers into borderline professional photographers.
Recently, researchers from Harvard University and the University of Vermont have used computer statistics to analyze the content of Instagram uploads and determine what that says about its users. In their study, researches used 166 test subjects and noted their association, if any, with mental diseases, such as depression and bipolar disorder. They then compared their photos of choice and tried to figure out if there were any correlations between someone’s mental health and what kinds of things they were posting. In an interview, researchers said “The algorithm we used looks for complex, systemic patterns across many data points to infer clues about individual psychology. If someone posts a dark, bluish photo to Instagram, it shouldn’t necessarily be a red flag for their therapist — that person could just like photos of whales, or blueberries.” They found that people who had a higher presence of depression-like symptoms were more likely to post things with gray or white shades; happier people tended to post more yellow and pink images. Furthermore, light blue was associated with non-depressive users while dark blue was connected with depression. Take a look at your recent Instagram posts: do their theories hold true?