MENLO PARK, July 25 — In the sunlit corridors of Menlo Park, a social network that began as a simple photo-sharing app on an iPhone screen has grown into one of the most powerful communication tools on the planet. Instagram, now owned by Meta Platforms, was launched for iOS on October 6, 2010, by Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger. Its rise was nothing short of explosive: one million registered users in its first two months, ten million within a year, and one billion by June 2018.
The wider picture of that growth is also a story of acquisition. In April 2012, Facebook—now Meta—bought the service for approximately US$1 billion in cash and stock.
That bet paid off handsomely. The Android version arrived that same month, followed by a Windows 10 app in October 2016 and, most recently, an iPadOS app in September 2025.
How It Works
Users upload media edited with filters, organise their content by hashtags, and tag locations through geographical tagging. Posts can be shared publicly or restricted to pre-approved followers. The platform also introduced Stories, a feature similar to Snapchat that allows posts to disappear after 24 hours.
As of January 2019, that feature alone was used by 500 million people every day. Instagram supports 33
The scrutiny over Instagram’s role in fostering unhealthy social comparison reflects a broader and long-standing debate about the impact of image-centric social media on adolescent mental health.
Researchers and child-advocacy groups have for years pointed to the curated, often idealized nature of posts—amplified by filters and editing tools—as a potential driver of negative self-perception among younger users. This concern has intensified as platform usage among teens has become nearly universal, with many spending hours daily viewing carefully selected highlights of peers’ lives. Internal research conducted by the platform’s parent company has previously acknowledged that some aspects of the service can be harmful to a subset of teenagers, particularly around social comparison and body image.
These findings, which were later made public, have fueled calls from lawmakers and regulators in multiple countries for greater transparency and stricter safeguards for minors. The issue sits at the intersection of product design, algorithmic amplification, and user privacy, prompting debates over whether platforms bear responsibility for the psychological effects of their features.
The controversy surrounding Instagram is part of a wider reckoning for social media companies over their influence on youth. Legislatures in several jurisdictions have proposed or passed measures aimed at limiting data collection from minors, restricting certain engagement-boosting features, and requiring age-verification systems. At the same time, the platforms themselves have begun introducing optional supervision tools and default privacy settings for younger users, though critics argue such steps are insufficient without broader structural changes to how content is recommended and displayed.
