There is such a thing as too much of a good thing. Now before I raise an outcry (“thanks, Captain Obvious!”) let me continue. For the most part, people tend to agree that social media in its most obvious forms (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram) is a good thing — a new way to connect with friends, get the latest updates and generally stay on top of things. Granted, usually these friends aren’t actual friends. The latest updates involve pictures of food, and “staying on top of things” consists of responses to 140 characters, but I digress. Social media is great, and it’s hard to imagine a day without, say, aimless scrolls through Instagram photos of people’s pets. 
  But like all good things, instead of enjoying them and using them in moderation, we as a culture have started to abuse and overuse Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and the like. The worst offenses of late have taken place on Instagram, so allow me to give some textbook examples of classic Instagram misuse.
   We’ve all been there. Fall break just happened and you just climbed Mt. Everest or jumped off the Empire State Building or whatever. Something awesome happened, and the time is ripe for an Instagram. But which picture do you post? Which picture do you upload so that everyone can see how much fun you are having camping/hiking/shopping/hang-gliding/partying/drinking coffee/sleeping/worship-dancing/whatever? Why not just post all 17 of them at once so that instead of scrolling past different photos, my entire feed consists of you and your friends doing *insert activity* in *insert location.* 
  Here’s another one: After the third or so picture of you and your friends at the beach I come to the conclusion — this may seem a bit presumptuous — that you are, indeed, at the beach. This is all well and good, since I think most people would agree that beach things are fun (hooray for sand!) but when essentially the same picture pops up on my dashboard (except, perhaps, with a different person or two) for the 10th time in three days I have to wonder if too much sand got lodged into said beachgoer’s phone, and now said phone is stuck on a never-ending Instagram loop of uploading and re-uploading the same three pictures over and over again in an eternal loop of beach posing, with alternate captions (“Beach with my girls!” “Beach hooray!” “Beach!”).
    The thing is, we’ve all been abusers at some point, especially when something momentous actually happens in our lives. It’s natural to want to post photos to Instagram or Facebook or to tweet on Twitter whenever you’re studying abroad, get engaged, have a baby, etc. But it feels as if instead of saving the Instagram/Twitter/Facebook abuse for the really cool stuff (such as, say, getting engaged in Switzerland while hang-gliding) there is a new tendency to want to post multiple photos of things that — while interesting — really only clog up the feed and prevent social media from doing what it’s actually supposed to do, which is connect people.    
  And it’s easier to connect people when people aren’t worried about proving to the world about how much fun they had by posting the same picture over and over again in a short amount of time. We tend to have a natural interest in other people’s lives to a point, and once that point is reached, instead of interest, most people tend to become annoyed due to what appears to be a form of social bragging. Even if this is not the intended effect, this is what posting a million photos comes off as. Post the camping, hiking, beach and city photos, but perhaps instead of posting 700 of them, just post the three best ones. I promise your followers will thank you.