Popular photo-sharing app Instagram is running a test that will hide likes received on photos and videos. The company has announced that few users in seven countries including Australia, Brazil, Canada, Ireland, Italy, Japan, New Zealand will not be able to see the number of likes that other users’ pictures have received or the number of times a video has been viewed.
However, they will be able to see the number of likes and views on their own posts. Whether the feature will be rolled in India, is not yet known.
‘We are looking forward to learning more about how this change might benefit everyone’s experience on Instagram,’ Instagram tweeted.
According to an Instagram spokesperson, the test is designed to let users focus more on the photos and videos you share, not how many likes they get.
The test first went live in Canada in May of 2018. Now Instagram is expanding the test to a number of countries to get a better sense of how the experience resonates with Instagram’s global community.
According to few studies that track human behaviour online, receiving smart phone notifications, including the likes you see on your own posts, sends a rush of the chemical dopamine to the brain, which leads a user to be social media addictive. While many social media activists have criticised social media apps linking them to mental health issues among young people. According to a 2017 study by the Royal Society for Public Health, in the Britain, described Instagram as being the social media platform that was the most detrimental to young people’s mental health.
