Pure Pleasure or Peer Pressure?: The De-Privatisation of Instagram Likes

Image Credit: www.kaboompics.com Via Pexels

It’s no secret that social media has always been performative.  No matter how much we may like to pretend our grid is effortlessly curated, the truth is that many of us have spent hours agonising over which version of ourselves feels most acceptable to present online. Until recently, this rather self-conscious side of social media was largely confined to what we chose to post. Now, with Instagram beginning to publicly display what we’ve liked, the way we consume and interact with content is becoming less authentic as well.

When Instagram first launched the “friends” tab within the reels feed in early 2025, I assumed that the publicization of our likes might lead to a decrease in engagement, with users not wanting to expose their guilty pleasures so openly. Perhaps, for some, this may still be the case, but as reels’ popularity continues to grow into 2026, the opposite effect is beginning to emerge. As I scroll through my feed, dotted on every other post is a small pink heart emblazoned over the profile picture of someone I know. Whilst it's somewhat unifying to see that a friend enjoyed the same video I did, as users become increasingly conscious of the publicity of their likes, it seems as if some are becoming more tactical with the content they engage with. 

This ‘performative’ liking has manifested in a number of ways, ranging from simple expression of niche interests to more blatant virtue signalling. A slew of meme pages dedicated solely to relatable quotes have cropped up all over the site, amassing thousands of likes from users eager to demonstrate their agreement. Amongst these statements are meta acknowledgements to the visibility of our likes, with some people even jokingly referring to those who interact with the same reels as them as their ‘reels liking competitor’. This apparent competition among users to consistently like the most niche memes and videos has made the term so ubiquitous that it has even been acronymised to ‘rlc’.

Of course, this is all in good fun. No one is seriously building up animosity towards their unspoken reels-liking rival (I hope). But it does speak to a significant change in the way people are consuming and engaging with content. With Gen Z’s consumption of short-form, small-screen content currently eclipsing other major media forms by a large margin, it feels as if we could be at risk of losing our ability to interact freely with entertainment, without considering how it reflects on us socially.

I’m not here to act holier-than-thou and lecture on the right way to use social media, because, frankly, my Instagram and TikTok screen time is embarrassing. However, with Instagram’s algorithm rewarding content with higher interactions, we risk homogenising the content circulating on reels, whilst creating an online environment in which liking something is as much about curating an image as it is expressing enjoyment. The de-privatisation of Instagram likes is another subtle reminder that in a hyper-visible digital world, even our private pleasures are no longer entirely our own.