New Sources of Insecurities

School Instagram accounts are well known to North students and students at many more schools. These accounts are made for various reasons like catching in-class snoozes, eating, bad posture, attractive people, bad outfits, and many more. Other schools have these accounts and it has spread throughout the nation, even making a statement on TikTok. These accounts are very insensitive and are played off as a joke. The people in charge of these accounts don’t take accountability for their actions and don’t care how they impact the people they’ve posted online. These accounts must stop!

These accounts can make a person insecure or uncomfortable being at school for fear of being posted online. Even if these accounts were made for comedic purposes many of these photos are taken unknowingly and posted without consent on a platform many individuals can view. These accounts go against people’s individual boundaries because some students have personal reasons for staying off social media such as insecurities or discomfort from strangers having access to their photos online. “I discovered the Instagrams by people talking about them and by some of my friends giving them to me,” commented freshman Lilian Cabrera.  

  These Instagram accounts function by DMing or contacting the person in charge of the account and giving them material to post, such as pictures. That results in them posting these photos on the page. To further explain one of the examples from the list of accounts, the “bad outfits” Instagram @jwn.fits contains photographs of students’ outfits. In other words, the outfit that a person had decided to wear to school that day was posted online depicted as a “bad outfit”. Doing this judges an individual’s personal style and discourages them from wearing clothing they are comfortable in due to fear of judgment from others. “Sometimes I do find them funny in a way but then again I feel very bad because some of these people have been posted on the accounts unknowingly,” stated freshman Sofia Magana. These accounts seem very hilarious and entertaining and many people enjoy laughing at themselves when shown to be on these accounts, but some think otherwise. The bad outfit account is very inconsiderate because a portion of students may not have the finances to buy different clothes and are being thrown out into public view for not being able to fit the newest fashion “trend”.

Most of these accounts are to make fun of someone, but there are others such as the “attractive people” account. On the surface, it looks like it makes someone feel happy and comfortable with themselves but sadly, the majority of these photos are sarcastically calling someone attractive, still leaving out others who have not been added, instilling more insecurities in those not included.

Instead of trying to make someone feel insecure about how they sit, how they eat, and what they wear, there should be accounts that make people feel confident about themselves and comfortable being on campus. Students should learn about boundaries when it comes to these accounts even if it’s a joke.