Instagram As The Map of Life

After spending the last week trawling through the profiles of many strangers, as well as posting photographs of any happenings that were vaguely interesting in my own life, I have made the observation that the humble Instagram account is a map of one's life. Every map has a purpose (Wood et. al, 2006), and just like the Mercator map is used for navigation and the Peters map is used to show the relative size of the continents, an Instagram account is a map of a person's life that presents them to other users.You could think of it as a Mercator map, used by visitors to navigate the life of a stranger (uncharted territory); what they look like, what they do, where they have been. 

But in thinking about the process of actually building an Instagram account, one is engaging in a kind of cartography by sharing pictures of the world around them and describing how they experience it, or by posting a selfie inside a new home to say "this is a new part of my life which I am ready to explore." Cartography is a form of narrative writing (Kuttainen, 2015), and by writing this narrative of our lives, we are not only creating this map, but also creating a place for ourselves within the vast 300 million user space (Smith, 2015). 

On a sentimental note to finish off, in 50 years' time (provided that Instagram still exists and that us oldies will still be using it), or even one year's time, Instagram will allow us to look back on our lives which have been mapped out over many years. Much like how many early maps, such as the Mappa Mundi, allow us to look back on how humankind saw the world then, and how it compares to the world map now.

References:

Kuttainen, V. (2015). Maps [Lecture slides]. James Cook University: Townsville

Smith, C. (2015). By The Numbers: 150+ Interesting Instagram Statistics (August 2015). Retrieved from http://expandedramblings.com/index.php/important-instagram-stats/  

Wood, D. et. al. (2006). The Multiple Truths of the Mappable World. In Seeing Through Maps: Many Ways to See the World. ODT, Inc.: UK

Image: Lofte, L. (2012). Instagram 3.0 Introduces Photo Map and Other Improvements. Retrieved from http://www.imore.com/instagram-30-introduces-photo-map-and-improvements