The awful (intentional) Instagram feature that is ruining your relationships.

Let me paint a scenario that I'm guessing many of you Instagramers out there are all too familiar with.

You climb into bed and grab your phone, looking forward to unwinding with some Instagram. Yesterday was crazy and today was even crazier and you haven't had a chance to check the gram in over 48 hours. That's 2 complete days of not seeing your friends' baby photos, sunsets shots, and incredible vacations spots that make you feel like your life sucks. So you open it up and start scrolling. Then your wife walks in and lays down next to you. She wants to talk. 

PAUSE. 

This is where things get really tough. You've made it through, oh who knows, maybe 30 photos so far but you still haven't gone back ALL THE WAY to the last photo you remember seeing when you opened Instagram a couple days ago. You love your wife and want to talk but you know what will happen if you set the phone down to chat. You all know right? Yep, you KNOW that when you finish the conversation - when she either falls asleep or goes to the bathroom to take off her makeup and brush her teeth - that Instagram will have timed out. This means you will be back at the top of your feed, forcing you to scroll through the same photos AGAIN in order to see yet unseen photos from yesterday. 

Forced to most recent photo.

THIS IS IT. This is the evil feature that Instagram (owned by Facebook) has consciously let exist. It knows it is ruining relationships. It knows it is causing your friend on the bus to ignore you because once a person has started down the Instagram road, that person is gone. Heck, you could announce that you got fired or that you were pregnant and they'll be so busy over double tapping someone's burger photo that they won't even hear you.

Here's the deal: You know that Instagram and Twitter know about one another. Which means the programmers at Instagram KNOW that there is the feature in Twitter that keeps your place, regardless of how long it has been since you last opened the app. The feature that, when you get off an airplane, doesn't rocket you past 5 hours of tweets but instead lets you work your way through them, on YOUR own timetable.

26 New Tweets - Not forced to the top.

So if Instagram is aware that this "maintain current location in feed" feature exists, the question is, why don't they fix it already? Usage. Instagram wants everyone on every device everywhere to use Instagram all the time. They want you and your mom and your 13 year old niece to use Instagram. They want Lebron and the 49ers and Lady Gaga on Instagram. They want you to open it every single day, multiple times a day. Why? Two reasons: 1)They are going to monetize Instagram. If you don't think they will, you are wrong. This will most likely be through ads. The higher the amount of people seeing ads with a high frequency means more money. NOTE: This article on Forbes was posted minutes ago. Click HERE.  2)They want more information about you. The more photos you take, the more photos you like, and the more locations you post all lead to more information they know about you. Wait, they care about this stuff? You bet they do. 

I love Instagram. I'm a regular. But I also hate the feeling that I have to check it often, knowing that catching up can be a time-consuming, relationship-damaging experience. And yet, this is JUST the reason Instagram doesn't allow you to bookmark your place in your feed. They want those spare moments on the bus, on the toilet, and in bed to be spent doing one thing: Instagramming.