For this blog assignment, I decided to look at my data files from Facebook, Google and Instagram. In the end I settled on analyzing only the Instagram data files because Facebook didn’t get back to me in time and my Google data wasn’t nearly as interesting as that from my Instagram.
I’m not going to go into detail about every single piece of data Instagram has on me. However, I will say that I was most surprised by how far back they tracked my comment history. I joined Instagram on January 2, 2012 (when I was a mere 12-year-old, which seems like eons ago) and the app has pretty much kept track of almost every comment I’ve made in those 8+ years. Now, I’m not a very active user of Instagram. I maybe post about 6 photos a year, use the Instagram Story feature sparingly and occasionally post a birthday wish or congratulatory comment here and there. Prior to looking at this file, I assumed that my 8+ year comment history would look exactly like this. I was surprised to learn that I was wrong.
While most of my comment history in the last 5 years has fallen into those categories, I was surprised to see the kinds of comments I was making during my early Instagram days. Scrolling back to the earliest data, it seems that sixth grade me was pretty into commenting on Hunger Games fan pages (cue groan). I like to think that I have a very good memory, but looking through the history I was shocked (and quite frankly a little embarrassed) that I didn’t remember making any of these comments.
Looking past my cringy middle school fangirl phase, the fact that Instagram has all of this data on hand is a pretty big deal. We all signed user agreements before using Instagram for the first time, but the majority of us (myself included) did not read the fine print; and somewhere within that tangled contract full of legal jargon, we gave Instagram permission to track and store our data from the app. So, the question is this: As a society, are there questions that we need to address to account for this massive store of data? I believe that there are.
First and foremost, these media companies need to have a more open and honest relationship with their consumers about data history; and the first step is making user agreements more user friendly. In the same vein, we as consumers need to work on our digital literacy so that we aren’t at a complete disadvantage. The second has to do with the way that we, as a society, use social media platforms like Instagram. In the digital age, there’s a strange balance between our desire for free expression and for privacy. But with these platforms, the former often comes at the expense of the latter. With the ability to access these personal data files, I would hope that people stop and consider ways they can alter their behavior to maintain their privacy in future.
Catherine Considers 