[OneTwoPetitFour]

Thanks for the perspective. I was an early Instagram user, but deleted my account not so long after they introduced stories.

Recently, I registered a new account, and after a grace period without ads, I was surprised by just how drenched it has become in advertising. I used it to follow professional athletes. First of, many of the organic posts are themselves sponsored advertising, then the athletes share brand posts from their sponsors, and then between every story you get an actual ad.

Of course, with more personal connections the trade of might be different, but for my use case described above Instagram seemed unsustainable.

[an_opabinia]

> but for my use case described above Instagram seemed unsustainable.

Which part?

Another interpretation is, professional athletes don't really enrich your life at all. You have as big a problem with celebrity as you do with a piece of software.

[mastazi]

I'm not parent but I follow many professional athletes as well and in my case Instagram is very useful! In fact it's the one social media account I didn't get rid of. For two reasons mainly:

* Announcements - Some of the sports I follow don't have a "regular season" like e.g. Basketball or American Football, they are organised more like boxing where an athlete may compete for one federation or another, and the events don't follow a pre-determined schedule: so you need to keep up with the news if you want to be able to watch them at all.

* Instructionals - athletes often will publish instructional videos and when that happens they advertise them on their channels. Those are usually an order of magnitude more in-depth than anything you can find for free (e.g. Youtube) - I was never very athletic but I'm finally trying to get better so those are very helpful for me. (Edit: Of course this is a form of advertising but I'm very disciplined and avoid overspending at all costs, I buy instructionals once in a blue moon).

[jedberg]

Most of the people I follow are friends with kids. It's how we swap pictures of our kids. The rest of my follows are web comics. I follow a couple of "famous" people, but they are mostly people with compelling content and not vapid influencer content.

My experience seems to be that I see a whole bunch of fresh updates from friends, and then ads. If I'm looking when there are few updates, it's mostly ads. If I see mostly ads I know that I should put the phone down and come back in a few hours. :)