Rachel Kanczes

Dr. Hakimi

ENGCOMP

28 April, 2019

A Like and a Snap Away

An alert, “9 hours of screen time,” pops up on my phone every night or so from my

default settings. That is a rare one—nine hours—but usually they range from around four hours

to possibly nine hours, depending on the day. I click on the alert; my total time on snapchat: 1

hour and 21 minutes; my total time on Instagram: 56 minutes. Out of that nine-hour day, I spend

over 7 hours on platforms such as Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, and YouTube. On an average

day where I am spending four hours a day on my phone, that time isn’t too different.

This dedicated social media time I have is not so outrageous if you look at all of the

teenagers in the rest of the United States, or even around the world. According to WVEA the

average American teenager spends 6 hours with social media a day. However, even without

needing research, I can say that from the people I have been around in my life, there is definitely

a likeliness in social media time. Regardless where kids are spending their time on Tumblr,

Snapchat, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, or Facebook, there is an overwhelming amount of hours

spent from day to day looking at images. These images that they look through can range from

anything being considered a meme, to the average look into someone’s life, or even pointless

snapchat stories they don’t even want to look at. On Instagram and Snapchat alone, the average

teen surfs through hundreds, maybe even thousands of photos a day; I can say that from personal

experience I spend time clicking through countless images, not even paying attention to what I’m
clicking through. Cycling through these images, you may believe that a teenager who has spent

time looking through the images presented to them on a daily basis would have a recollection of

what they have seen or what information was being brought to them, but if you were to ask me

what I had seen after a day of looking through images, I wouldn’t be able to tell you one thing

that I remember seeing.

Thousands of images cycle through my mind on a daily basis—thousands. But if I was

asked to give a recollection of any of the images I have seen throughout the entire day, I could

probably only tell you what cute dogs I saw on my Instagram feed; that is the ones I pay

attention to—the one’s I follow on a day to day basis. Today, we take the images we see on a

daily basis for granted, most people my age don’t even know the value of a photograph. Being

able to take a hundred photos in the blink of an eye may be something that is a technological

advancement, but in what sense in that a psychological advancement? We see so many images

throughout our lives, that the meaning of just one photo has plummeted into a sense we don’t

even feel. We have parents who appreciate that one good moment, taking one photo at a time—

my mom often asks me why I have her retake the same photo hundreds of times when all she can

do is snap one decent photo and be content for the next two years. My older family members

value the moment of a picture—getting people together for once special moment that may not

happen for another 10 years. But our generation? My generation? They face the camera as if

they have time to spare. They have time to take hundreds of photographs in one minute, but

don’t have the time to look back and reflect on what an image actually means—they don’t take

that precious time to see what someone was trying to capture from the image they created. I look

through thousands of images a day, but which one of these photos actually has meaning to me,
let alone anyone who sees it? The simple answer to that is, there is no meaning—meaning has

slowly been obliterated.

Written in 2003 by Susan Sontag, “Regarding the Pain of Others” opens up a discussion

about the impact that images have on society, and how people begin to perceive images. Being

written in 2003, the ideas that Sontag presents are somewhat outdated in comparison to today’s

world, but certain aspects and ideas can be recreated and resurfaced into something that might

help explain today’s social media platforms. In her essay, Sontag speaks about the saturation of

images and how the people seeing images become blind to any and all meaning because of the

amount presented to them. Sontag states, “People don’t become inured to what they are

shown—if that’s the right way to describe what happens—because of the quantity of images

dumped on them. It passivity dulls that feeling (102).” With thousands of images being cycled

through the averages teenagers life every single day, this oversaturation of images blurs the

feeling that an image once had. Looking to Instagram, many people try to post images that

appeal to the average persons aesthetic, opting for pictures of beauty and elegance, rather than

dreary and sadness. The images presented, are usually so similar and plentiful that they mean

nothing. Possibly seeing an image that looks different may draw interest for few, but for many

the next picture is just a swipe and a like away. Quickly liking and swiping to get through all of

your feed for the hour is what most people do. We pass off meaning of a photo so quickly, we

forget that the photo should’ve had any meaning at all. We accept the fact that we see thousands

of photos in our week, and we accept the fact that these images, to us, are not of importance.

The importance is what is passed off, and we often forget the intensity of some of the images

presented to us. The rarity and complexity of some of the more gruesome images on the

platform, ignite what Sontag calls “an initial spark.” This initial spark is something that is rare to
us, but something that comes with a sudden intensity, and burns out quickly, being able to swipe

to the next available photo.

Swiping and tapping through hundreds of similar images a day starts to get boring after

you have seen hundreds of images of people posing in flower fields and captions saying, “I wish

it was summer again.” However, there is a point on the timeline where something catches your

interest, and usually that would be a well-structured photo with many aesthetically pleasing

aspects, but actually what catches the eye is the different sort of image: an image of sadness; an

image depicting death; an image producing the emotion you fear you will encounter on a happy-

go-lucky platform such as Instagram, where people are just dying to tell you about the flowers

they freshly picked in a field today Every day, there is at least one photo that I see that catches

my eye and mostly many others too, and that usually isn’t someone posing in a flower field.

On social media platforms, such as Snapchat and Instagram, usually the most depicted

emotions are happiness and joy, but when an image surfaces of something containing sadness or

a caption stating the worst, one will stop to read, look, and think. After a glance, the next swipe

is quick, and overloads our mind with more images of happiness and joy rather than grief and

suffering, forgetting so quickly what we had just seen. Passing by a photo of someone’s grief or

sadness, you quickly forget who’s picture you were even looking at and what it even meant.

You may have just passed a person talking about their depression or someone talking about the

death of a loved one, but all you gained from looking at this photo was an initial spark of interest

because of difference and the want to save your thoughts with more images of over filtered

happiness. We see an initial spark, we gain interest and lose it, almost as quick as you can blow

out a candle. On my Instagram a few weeks ago, someone I follow had lost their dog to cancer,

resulting in a heartbreaking caption about how they were put down to result in a better life.
Everyone is quick to comment, “Sorry for your loss,” but as everyone is quick to comment,

everyone is quick to swipe to the next photo—quick to swipe to a better and happier feeling. We

want to feel happy, so we limit our exposure to images that don’t make us so happy.

We pay attention to certain images to shape what we, as viewers and spectators, want to

see. As Sontag writes, “it seems normal for people to fend off thinking about the ordeals of

others, even others whom it would be easy to identify (102).” Sontag explains how the

relationships we have with people that bring us together as a common factor, often have no

meaning in the long run—in order to improve our own well-being, we only care about our own

well-being. We see people who are just like us, posting things that spark our mind, but we

quickly turn a blind eye to finish tapping through the timeline. With a want to stand out and grab

a spectators attention, the images of helplessness and despair are unique, appearing different and

eye catching rather than the clean-cut and face-tuned photos that one clicks through every second

of the day. This suffering is unique, quick to grab attention, and quick to lose it. In order to

keep a clean-cut feed or timeline, we block images, we remove friends, or we even reduce the

amount of words we can see (wanting to cut out captions that feature the word death is an

available option on platforms such as Twitter). Sontag explains that “flooded with images of the

sort that once used to shock and arouse indignation, we are losing our capacity to react (108),”

and that is exactly what is happening. After viewing hundreds or thousands of images a day, one

becomes numb to the meaning of a photo; the true story behind a quick snap. We see what we

want to and with thousands of photos at our fingertips, the possibility of removing an image from

our mind with another is not so far-fetched. The impact of these platforms and the creation of

their properties and options, have given the user a chance to control what they see; a chance to

become completely blind to what they don’t want to see.

 Images are everywhere, and that is not something that will ever change, at least in my

generation’s lifetime. The amount of images the average teenager, or even adult for that matter,

sees a day will never change. The advancement and creation of social media platforms have

changed the way that we see images today and what they mean to us. The blind-eye we turn to

images is not something that we as people can innately change. We can never return to the time

where a photo meant as much as it does, and the meaning that was so special to so many, is now

a distant memory. With the influence of social media in our lives, the impact of what an image

means will never be the same as it once was, as just capturing a moment with that last piece of

film you had in your camera.

 Works Cited

Fox, Maggie. “‘Teens Spend 'Astounding' Nine Hours a Day in Front of Screens: Researchers.”

WVEA Help Center, WVEA, 2019.

Sontag, Suzan. Regarding the Pain of Others. 2003.