By: Valentina Medina
Bark! Voice of the Bulldogs
Staff Writer

On Oct. 4th, 2021, many people were experiencing trouble loading Instagram for almost the whole day.
“It wasn’t connecting for like 5 hours- maybe more- and you couldn’t refresh anything,” senior, Salome Medina said.
Teens resorted to going on the app TikTok instead, and many posted videos asking if others were having issues with Instagram.
“I didn’t really care that much, I just noticed people on TikTok asking if everyone was on TikTok because Instagram was down,” Medina said.
Although some students like Medina weren’t affected by it too much, others were freaking out.
“I don’t really use Instagram, so I wasn’t that angry, but I use tik TikTok a lot. My sister, on the other hand, uses Instagram all the time, and she was mad,” sophomore, Wendy Melody said.
This younger generation grew up surrounded by technology so much, to the point that many are accustomed to checking social media apps every day.
It has become an obsession, and it is taking over the lives of young teenagers. Teens are constantly on their phones because it makes many happy, but some are starting to lose sight of real-life experiences that truly bring happiness.
Social media apps, such as Instagram, TikTok, and Snapchat, are huge, toxic platforms that advertise fake beauty standards.
These beauty standards of the ‘perfect body’ or the ‘perfect face’ have resulted in photoshopped pictures all over the feeds of social media users, causing people to feel insecure.
Instagram was created for sharing memories with friends and family, but it has turned into a popularity contest. People worry about the number of likes and followers, but that doesn’t mean anything in the real world.
One can have many online friends/followers, but that’s certainly not as special as real connections in person.