Selfies and Works of Art: Instagram Has Room for It All

   For some students, the Instagram app, a popular photo-sharing platform, is both a time commitment and a creative outlet. 

   Those students are likely to be girls. According to a study on millennial social media use by the Harvard Institute of Politics, 53 percent of females ages 18 to 29 use Instagram, compared to 34 percent of males in the same age group.  In a survey of both male and female college students, 53 percent have the app. 

   Girls tend to gravitate toward visually-oriented platforms, said Jacqueline Nesi, a social, clinical, and developmental psychology researcher at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

   Taylor Sternenberg, a sophomore at Michigan State University, uses three Instagram accounts, she said. One is her personal account, one is for her watercolor designs, and one is for VIM Magazine, MSU’s student-run fashion magazine.

   For Alyssa Bedaine, a senior at MSU who has two accounts – one for personal use, and another for makeup – using social media as a creative space seemed natural.


   “I’m friends with a lot of creative people,” said Bedaine, “That’s who I normally surround myself with, and they do the same thing, so it’s kinda like keeping up with others.”

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