In social media's Instagram v. TikTok battle, is Instagram Reel-y dead?

In the digital age we're living in, it’s hard to keep up with all of the new social media applications, trends and updates. With newer platforms like TikTok rising to the top, older platforms like Instagram are trying very hard to keep their relevance by trying to be like those newer platforms — but is this really what the people want?

Since the start of the pandemic, when everyone was stuck in their homes for months, most of the general population fell victim to the TikTok chokehold. The short, bite-sized videos kept the world entertained in the uncertain times we were in and also killed our attention spans.

It's so easy to get sucked into the black hole of the "For You Page." Without even realizing it, you could've spent what feels like a healthy 20 minutes of leisure scrolling through when, in reality, you just wasted four hours of your time, maybe missed an important assignment deadline and your dog's engagement to your neighbor's goldfish.

TikTok evolved from the app Vine where users shared funny, creative 6-second videos and skits. When the app was discontinued by Twitter in 2017, it opened the doors for Musical.ly, which later turned into TikTok.

In 2020, former President Donald J. Trump said he planned to ban TikTok because there was speculation that user data was being sold to the Chinese government, making it a threat to national security.

Instagram, Youtube and Snapchat had all already created or promoted their own short-form videos in hopes of capitalizing off of TikTok's popularity, and each platform was eager to fill the potential gap that was supposed to be created, but the ban was eventually dropped.

Instagram, which is now owned by Meta, used to be the hot commodity in the social media world. Blowing Facebook, Snapchat and Twitter out of the water, it was always the place where you could enjoy trends like "man crush Monday" and "throwback Thursday," see funny animal pictures and everyone's duck faces, of course.

Some time has passed since the casual age of Instagram posting, and it isn’t just for fun anymore. It's become a lifestyle for some people. Nowadays, everyone's an influencer if they have their own platform to say and do whatever they want.

To keep Instagram’s relevance, it has added features that resemble other social media platforms like “Stories,” “Shop” and “Reels.” Like TikTok, Reels allow you to post videos that feed our short attention spans. Reels have a similar format to TikTok videos, causing users' timelines to look a little different from Instagram's photo-based feed. With this new feature, a new algorithm also came about, and user’s had a lot to say about it.

The new algorithm in general is messy. Along with the oddly formatted timelines to adhere to Reels, users also experienced an overwhelming amount of “suggested posts” in their feeds from accounts they weren’t following, pretty much mimicking TikTok’s For You Page. People were up in arms because the suggested posts were shown more than posts from accounts people actually followed.

In the good old days when Instagram was just for sharing photos, posts would show up in chronological order with newer posts at the top. Posts would have a shelf life of approximately 24 to 48 hours in the timeline and a broader reach. With the newest algorithm update, it’s hard to tell how long posts will be shown on someone’s feed if it’s shown at all.

Creators realized that their posts don’t do as well as they used to and tend to blow up months after they were originally posted. On his YouTube channel, Robert Benjamin breaks down the way new Instagram algorithms work and how delayed explosion blocks some content from breaking through the shadows.

Benjamin explains that for your posts to consistently be shown and get significant engagement, users have to post multiple times a day to get that recognition. Unless you're a content creator, this is very unrealistic. For creators, this may also be difficult to work with due to how hard it is to create content without knowing whether or not it’s good enough and if it will do well.

Back in July, photographer and TikTok personality Tati Bruening, also known as Illumitati, started a petition titled “Make Instagram Instagram again”. With more than 300,000 signatures, the petition was created to bring back the chronological timelines, fix the algorithm to focus more on photo sharing and overall just stop trying to make Instagram something that it isn’t.

The movement received a lot of attention, and the people were heard. Instagram slowly started to back away from the TikTok style timeline and did away with a good amount of suggested posts that were popping up on users’ feeds that also mimicked TikTok's For You Page. Sadly, this was not enough to keep the people pleased. Though the formatting and organization of Instagram’s timeline have gotten better, the algorithm is still a prominent issue.

Now I wouldn’t say that Instagram is necessarily going under, but it just isn’t in its prime anymore. TikTok is having its 5 minutes of fame, and soon people will be back to their roots on Instagram. Right now, Instagram isn’t the right place for people to share their interests and lifestyles anymore due to how difficult the algorithm is to work with which makes people stir more toward TikTok.

Meta reported to The Wall Street Journal that Instagram surpassed 2 billion active users last year since the launch of reels. TikTok stated that it has approximately 1.6 billion monthly active users a month.

At the end of the day, Instagram and other platforms are a business. These companies need to make money, so they'll do whatever they think will get their active user engagement and revenue back up. Feedback is important, especially because social media companies’ main goals are to be able to please and create a space for everyone in all demographics.

What these companies don’t realize when it comes to why users downloaded these apps in the first place is the uniqueness of them. In the end, if all platforms are able to do the same thing, nobody is going to win the title of being the best platform.