Instagram Reels is racist. It’s a fact that is very well known among most who use the platform, and it is becoming a bigger problem. A recent survey of Boulder High School students has shown that a large majority (76.1%) of students believe that Instagram reels has a higher degree of racism, sexism and homophobia than other short video platforms, and 71% say that it is the platform they have seen the most of this type of bigotry on. Although Instagram Reels is clearly seen as the most intolerant short video platform, at first glance there doesn’t seem to be much difference between Reels and its competitors such as TikTok and YouTube Shorts. So why is it that people hold the opinion that Reels is the most intolerant platform?
A massive part of the racism that is apparent on Instagram Reels is the platform’s failure to enforce proper content moderation. Instagram uses Artificial Intelligence to moderate its content, and though these systems are efficient, they are not as simply not as good as humans at detecting offensive content. Direct racial slurs or offensive phrases can flag a video as racist, but oftentimes, content creators use dog whistles to avoid detection of their racist content.
For example, a racist reel that went unchecked by the algorithm garnered half a million likes while sporting the caption “Life if 13% of the population didn’t exist” accompanied by the upbeat song from the Lego Movie, “Everything is Awesome.” Though the video is not explicitly racist, the underlying implication refers to the statistic that America is 13% African American and the country would be better off without them. Such content which is racist without being too explicit often goes unchecked by Instagram’s moderation algorithms.
However racist reels can be on Instagram, the most blatant and overt intolerance is often found in the comments. One viral video with 2 million likes shows how the exact same video titled “A day in the life of an 18 year old at 3 and a half feet tall” got vastly different results on Youtube Shorts compared to Instagram reels. The creator shares a screen recording of scrolling through the comment sections of the same video on both platforms, and while the Youtube one garnered many positive and supportive comments, on Instagram the comments ruthlessly mocked the creator for his dwarfism with phrases such as “good job nano n***a” and “good job portable n***a” and “bro is 34% downloaded”. These comments, which all received thousands of likes, show how the culture on Instagram encourages bullying and targeting marginalized communities.
Racist comments on Instagram often seemingly come out of nowhere. One video captioned “Crazy how we just casually leave thousands of dollars worth of equipment unattended at ski hills” demonstrates this perfectly. Instagram users responded with immediate and blatant racism, with top comments such as “Because the usual suspects don’t ski”, “No basketball Americans”, “No kfc people= no theft” and worst of all “That’s how the whole country would be if we had picked our own cotton”.
Besides demonstrating the horrifying amount of racism on the platform, these comments also illustrate how racism most often comes up on instagram. Phrases such as “KFC People” and “Basketball Americans” and “The usual suspects” are often used to refer to black people. These phrases are used both to escape content moderation and to hide their blatant racism behind a veil of humor. These comedic forms of racism prevalent on Instagram normalizes making racist jokes or comments and creates an environment where people can say incredibly racist things with no fear of backlash or retribution, covered by the implication that it’s only a joke.
The deeply concerning thing about Instagram racism is how brazenly people express racist views. Unlike TikTok and Youtube Shorts, people on Instagram have usernames and profile pictures that often contain their real names and faces, and users’ profiles are closely linked to their friends and social circles. If an Instagram user likes a racist post or comments something offensive, their activity is displayed to their followers who view the same post. This is why it is worrying that people are so racist on instagram; people’s racist sentiments are tied to identity and visible to everyone they know. All of this points to the conclusion that Instagram is making us far more openly racist than before.
To no one’s surprise, Instagram is terrible for society. It has been linked by the American Psychological Association to depression, eating disorders, self esteem issues, and social anxiety in teenagers. It desensitizes people to violence and death with the extreme amount of reels that show people fighting, getting into car accidents, or dying in various ways. It rots the brains of children and teenagers by shortening their attention span with content ever-increasing in its stupidity and mindlessness. It provides a safe space to spew vile, racist, and despicable comments that most people would never say in real life. With 8 out of 10 people in Boulder High School regularly using Instagram reels, this platform’s influence extends to a vast portion of our youth and our greater society. Instagram is already making us dopamine addicted, depressed, jealous, and anxious people, and now it is making people more racist as well. Instagram turns us into awful people, and our advice is that next time you are mindlessly scrolling through this app, put down your phone and do something worthwhile with your time.
