Lydia Prior knew that something had gone wrong with her Instagram this week when she got an unexpected notification: a follower had liked her instant.
Ms. Prior, a full-time content creator in Hertfordshire, England, is no stranger to curating Instagram grid posts, stories and even the occasional repost. But what was an instant? She had never heard of it.
She frantically clicked on the notification, thinking, “Oh no, what have I done?”
On the app, she was greeted by a nightmare: a half-dozen unflattering selfies accidentally shared with hundreds of her followers.
“I’ve sent six pictures of my double chin,” she said. “I have no idea what’s going on, and I can’t get rid of them, and everyone kept laughing and being like, ‘Did you do that on purpose?’”
Ms. Prior, 33, was one of millions of Instagram users this week who stumbled upon instants, a new app feature that shares a photo with a person’s mutual followers or close friends — immediately after it’s taken.
How do instants work?
Since Instagram rolled out the feature on Wednesday, users have commiserated over its unthinkable side effects, from the threat of an accidental toilet selfie to sharing a snap of the moment they wake up.
Soon after learning about her unflattering posts, Ms. Prior searched for ways to disable the feature.
“I was like, ‘There’s just no way this ends well for me,’” Ms. Prior said. “I’ve got my fiancé’s family on there. Could you imagine?”
Instants appear as a small stack of photos in the bottom right corner of a user’s inbox. You can tap through the stack to see posts from people you know before a camera opens, allowing you to share your own photos. Instagram provides a brief tutorial on how to use instants the first time a user clicks on the photo stack.
On the camera page, you can manually choose whether your photo goes to “Friends” or “Close Friends.” The second you tap the shutter button, the photo that you take is shared with the people on those lists.
Only users whom you follow and who follow you back, or those on your close friends list, can see your instants, a Meta spokeswoman said. Those people can react and reply to the images, but in contrast to stories, you won’t be able to tell who the lurkers are if they only viewed it.
Similar to snaps on Snapchat, instants disappear immediately after someone has seen them. Nobody can view an instant after 24 hours, and your followers also can’t screenshot them.
‘We’ve got the double chins.’
Sophia Pacitti, 32, couldn’t stop laughing on Wednesday night when she discovered instants. Her photo stack was flooded with unfiltered selfies taken from awkward angles, often shared by friends with carefully curated Instagram presences.
“I know these people, and they never post selfies like this,” Ms. Pacitti said. “We’ve got the double chins; we’ve got the forehead selfies, the confused and disgruntled faces.”
In solidarity with her friends, Ms. Pacitti posted a “silly, ugly-looking” photo with her eyes rolled back and half of her face in the frame.
She called the update “wack” in a reel posted on Thursday, where her followers shared in the humiliation. “We all got a taste of what it feels like to be an old person trying to navigate social media,” one user commented.
“A lot of people are going to be really embarrassed, and others are going to get really mad because they are ruining their reputation of being perfect, with these filters and orchestrated stories,” she said. “This is the real and the raw, you know? They’re getting caught out in the wild.”
Instagram wants users to share ‘more authentic moments.’
Instagram has said that instants offer users a way to share casual, everyday photos that aren’t as polished as their feed and story posts.
In a reel on Wednesday, Adam Mosseri, Instagram’s chief executive, said the feature would help people share “much more authentic moments about their day.”
“We know that this type of sharing of personal moments with friends is a core part of what makes Instagram Instagram,” Mr. Mosseri said. “But we also know that a lot of people don’t really share a lot to their profile grids anymore, so we’re always looking for new ways, like Instants, to get people to connect around personal content with the people that matter to them most.”
Brian Bidanjiri, a personal trainer and nutrition coach, rarely shares casual Instagram posts because he uses his account to recruit clients. But the introduction of instants has given him a low-stakes way to engage with his friends on the app.
“It doesn’t need to get any likes,” he said. “It doesn’t matter how many views it gets. It’s just me being able to be silly.”
How to undo and avoid sending instants.
It’s easy to undo an instant.
If you immediately regret a photo, you can tap the “undo” button that appears at the bottom of your screen right after you share it, but this needs to happen within seconds of sending it.
You can also delete individual instants from the archive where they are stored. Users can access the archive by tapping the four squares in the top right corner of their instants page. From there, tap the instant you want to delete, then select “Delete instant” from the drop-down menu in the top right corner of the screen.
If your selfie skills are exceptionally clumsy, you can also disable instants in your settings and activity tab. Under “What you see,” tap “Content preferences.” Then toggle “Hide instants in inbox.”
It’s also possible to temporarily snooze instants. From your Instagram inbox, hold down on the stack of instants and swipe right to hide them. You can swipe left to bring them back. But careful where you click.
