Social Media & the Capitalisation of Photography

In 2023 it was film. In 2024 it was digital. With each year a new wave of trends breaks its crest across

social media platforms, fuelling a tsunami of purchases which are only neglected the following year

as the trend inevitably recedes. There are many examples of this - labubus, which entered mainstream

consciousness seemingly overnight, are an obvious contender destined to face the crash of earlier

trends - but behind the scenes is a more subtle yet potentially larger driving force behind impulse

purchases and thus impulse throwaways: the devices we use to capture our lives in ways that are more

often than not derived from social media. 

The simple smartphone camera does not suffice anymore. The ownership of physical cameras is on

the rise once again, driven by what on the surface seems to be nostalgia for a time before social media

but what is in fact part of a wider consumerist trend favouring physical media in a way that both

facilitates and is facilitated by sites such as Instagram and Pinterest. A major driving force behind the

preference for digital cameras is their generally higher image quality, which is often encouraged by

the looming presence of social media and the invitation to post online; meanwhile, film cameras are

oftentimes used to create a heavily-curated inauthentically ‘imperfect’ candid feel to a post.

According to Market Research Future, in 2024 alone the UK digital camera market grew to 319.32

USD Million, compared to 303.25 USD Million the previous year, and is projected to increase further.

Consumers now tend to prioritise cameras that combine the simplicity of a smartphone camera with

the quality and authenticity of something more, a driving force behind recent changes in the camera

market. There are, of course, many admirable reasons to invest in a device that enables you to capture

memories authentically. However, impulse purchases of cameras to feed into the aesthetic of the pre

social media era only for the photos they take to be uploaded to Instagram destroys the very motive of

the initial shift towards digital and film photography. 

Nothing compares to the cosy familiarity and nostalgia evoked by a digital camera candid, with their

popularity being driven in part by the idealisation of an early 2000s childhood - a time before social

media drove over-consumption to an all-time high. The undercurrent of this is often a desire to return

to the feelings that permeated the time, and for most of us the early 2000s are associated with the calm

absent-mindedness of childhood before the world collectively turned our personalities into a series of

micro-trends and aesthetics fuelled by the growth of social media sites. The nostalgia itself stems

from the timeless quality created by the lack of rapid fads that define our lives today. Back then,

having a pocket-sized camera was not the trend it is now; it was a necessity if you wanted to capture

the world around you. It is worth remembering what drove digital cameras to their current popularity:

their history of being used by people who valued the preservation of memories over other physical

assets seems antithetical to their current use as something mostly bought for the sole purpose of being

another possession in a world dictated by trends, given that they are no longer essential to capturing

memories. Social media capitalising on this provides a facade of authenticity without preserving the

imperfections that give photography its soul - the over-exposure of digital photos with flash and the

unpredictability of film are often filtered out before being uploaded online. 

In order to preserve the spirit of photography and save it from aestheticisation, turning different

photography styles into fleeting micro-trends, we should all aim to invest in a single, good-quality

camera to use even beyond the point where that style of photography inevitably falls out of popularity,

adhering with the initial purpose of cameras to provide joy in the long-term rather than a short-term

burst of excitement before being forgotten about. It is worth asking yourself, before buying a new

camera, whether your purchase is motivated by authentic reasons, or whether you are simply adhering

to a social media aesthetic that promotes over-consumption. Leaving photos in their original form

rather than sharing all over social media makes the joy of photography more authentic, keeping it

closer to the heart as you get to experience the media in the way in which it was originally intended to

be perceived. 

Instead of becoming an ebb and flow of fads rather than an enduring hobby, photography of any kind

should be a celebration of our ephemerality in time, a reminder to slow down and preserve memories

rather than distribute them. 

Sources: 

https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/reports/uk-digital-camera-market-49114