Why Does Instagram Think I’m Unhealthy?
Judging by the ads Instagram is constantly showing me, you’d think I’m falling apart.
The deluge of sponsored posts in my feed suggests I need to take supplements to balance my hormones, get a device to monitor my blood glucose, consult an app to supercharge my metabolism, use red-light therapy to lose weight and smear on cream to eliminate my wrinkles.
I might be in middle age, but I don’t think I need any of it.
I’m an avid hiker who loves being outdoors. I also enjoy cooking. I follow outdoor and food magazines, along with accounts for stand-up paddle boarding, log cabins and national parks. Yet, I don’t see any ads for hiking boots or cooking utensils—just ones telling me I’m aging and in serious need of health and beauty help.
I spoke to more than a dozen women in their 40s and 50s who said their feeds have also been full of these ads. Middle-aged men told me they’re getting ads for fitness apps, hair-growth creams and testosterone supplements. Everyone said they’re fed up.
“Our goal is to provide a personalized ad experience to help people discover businesses and content they love,” says a spokeswoman for
Meta Platforms Inc.,
META -1.20%
which owns both Instagram and Facebook. “People can also give us feedback by closing out ads, modifying their ad preferences and telling us which ads they want to see more or less of.”
She’s right. There are tools to curtail some unwanted ads. (More on those below.) But if I’m not all that interested in this aging-related health content, why all the ads for supplements and weight-loss programs?
Every move you make
Instagram pulls from users’ online and offline activities to determine which ads to show them. Factors such as age and location are combined with accounts you follow, posts you like and ads you click on.
I looked at the ad topics Instagram decided I want to see and found some head-scratchers there. Light? Laboratory?
Photo:
Julie Jargon/The Wall Street Journal
If your Facebook and Instagram accounts are linked, they share profile info, which could include your preferred hobbies, books and more.
Other online sites, apps, newsletters and services you use might sell your data to Meta.
Just visiting a retailer’s website, downloading its app or adding a product to a shopping cart—without buying it—can result in that retailer’s ads following you around online.
The phone numbers or email addresses you share at brick-and-mortar stores go on a customer list that might get matched to your Instagram profile. That collagen powder you once bought at a vitamin shop? Might explain all the supplement ads.
Both Instagram and Facebook let you tap on the upper-right corner of an ad and select “Why you’re seeing this ad.”
You won’t necessarily get a big reveal. When I did that on a weight-loss ad, it said the advertiser wanted to reach women over age 35 living in the U.S.—but the ad might be influenced by “other advertiser choices.”
Follow the money
So if the ads you see have little to do with your core interests, it might just be business.
“The algorithm is not designed to find your interests, it’s designed for the best interest of the company,” says Guillaume Chaslot, a former YouTube engineer who founded AlgoTransparency, an organization that explains how algorithms work. “If trying to change your interests is better for [the platform’s] profit, it might do just that.”
Health and wellness ads—a broad category that includes pharmaceuticals, cannabis gummies and Keto-diet plans—are a growing source of revenue for Instagram, according to app-research firm Sensor Tower. Health and wellness marketers spent $1.13 billion on Instagram ads in 2022, up 9.4% from the prior year.
In 2021, the first full year Sensor Tower began tracking ad spending on Instagram, health and wellness was the fifth largest category. Last year, it jumped to third place, ranking behind consumer packaged goods and retail—which both declined between 2021 and 2022.
‘It’s an endless loop’
Companies have been hawking antiaging products as long as we’ve had ads. When the messages are on social media, they’re more concentrated.
We know the effects that seeing too much of certain content can have on kids, especially when it comes to body image. But what about on adults old enough to understand how social media works?
SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS
What does your Instagram feed say about you? Join the conversation below.
“The constant flow of ads and images triggers those weak spots in all of us,” says Pamela Rutledge, director of the Media Psychology Research Center, an independent research organization.
Searching online for ways to be healthier can backfire when we wind up with a torrent of ads pitching health-related products, she says.
“The anxiety and desire to look younger, thinner, fitter, better made-up or more fashionable gets continually reinforced by our desire to find out how, sending us to the very information sources that triggered our anxiety in the first place,” Dr. Rutledge adds. “It’s an endless loop unless we stop it.”
What you can do
There are ways to stop the barrage of ads you don’t want to see on Instagram and Facebook, although the tools can be cumbersome.
You can hide ads you don’t want to see and learn more about why you’re seeing them.
Photo:
Julie Jargon/The Wall Street Journal
Adjust your preferences. You can choose topics you’d like to see less of, such as politics, social issues, as well as beauty and personal care. Go into your settings, tap on ads, then tap on ad topics. You can tap on any topic and select “See less.”
Hide ads. Tap in the upper-right corner of an ad and a screen will pop up giving you the option to hide the ad. If you tap on that, Instagram won’t show you that ad again and, for a while, will display fewer ads from that company.
Curb off-platform tracking. You can tell Instagram not to use off-platform activity for ads. From settings, tap on ads, then tap “Activity information from ad partners.”
I plan to do all this in my account. I’ll let you know what Instagram starts showing me next.
—For more Family & Tech columns, advice and answers to your most pressing family-related technology questions, sign up for my weekly newsletter.
Write to Julie Jargon at [email protected]
Copyright ©2022 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8
Judging by the ads Instagram is constantly showing me, you’d think I’m falling apart.
The deluge of sponsored posts in my feed suggests I need to take supplements to balance my hormones, get a device to monitor my blood glucose, consult an app to supercharge my metabolism, use red-light therapy to lose weight and smear on cream to eliminate my wrinkles.
I might be in middle age, but I don’t think I need any of it.
I’m an avid hiker who loves being outdoors. I also enjoy cooking. I follow outdoor and food magazines, along with accounts for stand-up paddle boarding, log cabins and national parks. Yet, I don’t see any ads for hiking boots or cooking utensils—just ones telling me I’m aging and in serious need of health and beauty help.
I spoke to more than a dozen women in their 40s and 50s who said their feeds have also been full of these ads. Middle-aged men told me they’re getting ads for fitness apps, hair-growth creams and testosterone supplements. Everyone said they’re fed up.
“Our goal is to provide a personalized ad experience to help people discover businesses and content they love,” says a spokeswoman for
Meta Platforms Inc.,
META -1.20%
which owns both Instagram and Facebook. “People can also give us feedback by closing out ads, modifying their ad preferences and telling us which ads they want to see more or less of.”
She’s right. There are tools to curtail some unwanted ads. (More on those below.) But if I’m not all that interested in this aging-related health content, why all the ads for supplements and weight-loss programs?
Every move you make
Instagram pulls from users’ online and offline activities to determine which ads to show them. Factors such as age and location are combined with accounts you follow, posts you like and ads you click on.
I looked at the ad topics Instagram decided I want to see and found some head-scratchers there. Light? Laboratory?
Photo:
Julie Jargon/The Wall Street Journal
If your Facebook and Instagram accounts are linked, they share profile info, which could include your preferred hobbies, books and more.
Other online sites, apps, newsletters and services you use might sell your data to Meta.
Just visiting a retailer’s website, downloading its app or adding a product to a shopping cart—without buying it—can result in that retailer’s ads following you around online.
The phone numbers or email addresses you share at brick-and-mortar stores go on a customer list that might get matched to your Instagram profile. That collagen powder you once bought at a vitamin shop? Might explain all the supplement ads.
Both Instagram and Facebook let you tap on the upper-right corner of an ad and select “Why you’re seeing this ad.”
You won’t necessarily get a big reveal. When I did that on a weight-loss ad, it said the advertiser wanted to reach women over age 35 living in the U.S.—but the ad might be influenced by “other advertiser choices.”
Follow the money
So if the ads you see have little to do with your core interests, it might just be business.
“The algorithm is not designed to find your interests, it’s designed for the best interest of the company,” says Guillaume Chaslot, a former YouTube engineer who founded AlgoTransparency, an organization that explains how algorithms work. “If trying to change your interests is better for [the platform’s] profit, it might do just that.”
Health and wellness ads—a broad category that includes pharmaceuticals, cannabis gummies and Keto-diet plans—are a growing source of revenue for Instagram, according to app-research firm Sensor Tower. Health and wellness marketers spent $1.13 billion on Instagram ads in 2022, up 9.4% from the prior year.
In 2021, the first full year Sensor Tower began tracking ad spending on Instagram, health and wellness was the fifth largest category. Last year, it jumped to third place, ranking behind consumer packaged goods and retail—which both declined between 2021 and 2022.
‘It’s an endless loop’
Companies have been hawking antiaging products as long as we’ve had ads. When the messages are on social media, they’re more concentrated.
We know the effects that seeing too much of certain content can have on kids, especially when it comes to body image. But what about on adults old enough to understand how social media works?
SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS
What does your Instagram feed say about you? Join the conversation below.
“The constant flow of ads and images triggers those weak spots in all of us,” says Pamela Rutledge, director of the Media Psychology Research Center, an independent research organization.
Searching online for ways to be healthier can backfire when we wind up with a torrent of ads pitching health-related products, she says.
“The anxiety and desire to look younger, thinner, fitter, better made-up or more fashionable gets continually reinforced by our desire to find out how, sending us to the very information sources that triggered our anxiety in the first place,” Dr. Rutledge adds. “It’s an endless loop unless we stop it.”
What you can do
There are ways to stop the barrage of ads you don’t want to see on Instagram and Facebook, although the tools can be cumbersome.
You can hide ads you don’t want to see and learn more about why you’re seeing them.
Photo:
Julie Jargon/The Wall Street Journal
Adjust your preferences. You can choose topics you’d like to see less of, such as politics, social issues, as well as beauty and personal care. Go into your settings, tap on ads, then tap on ad topics. You can tap on any topic and select “See less.”
Hide ads. Tap in the upper-right corner of an ad and a screen will pop up giving you the option to hide the ad. If you tap on that, Instagram won’t show you that ad again and, for a while, will display fewer ads from that company.
Curb off-platform tracking. You can tell Instagram not to use off-platform activity for ads. From settings, tap on ads, then tap “Activity information from ad partners.”
I plan to do all this in my account. I’ll let you know what Instagram starts showing me next.
—For more Family & Tech columns, advice and answers to your most pressing family-related technology questions, sign up for my weekly newsletter.
Write to Julie Jargon at [email protected]
Copyright ©2022 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8
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