On May 13 2026, Instagram released Instants for everyone. This was added as apart of Instagram's effort to add every feature from every app that ever has and will exist. However, Instants is confusing, because I can't exactly see a reason to use it, and I think most people agree that it has no reason to exist.
Where?
Most other features that Instagram added are somewhat well integrated into the app. Stories appear at the top of the feed and as a ring around the profile picture of people who uploaded one, videos become reels, and so on. As time has gone on, Instagram has run out of places to put new things. When they added the map it was placed at a random position in the notes carousel. Finding the Roblox clone is a scavenger hunt, but I don't mind that because I don't want to access the Metaverse inside of Instagram. Instants is probably the most awkward of these yet. The button to access it just kinda floats on the side of the chat list.
Not only does this look really ugly, but it's just awkward. The only time I've seen buttons floating on the side of the screen is when the TikTok Shop is having a stupid sale nobody cares about. At least you can hide this by swiping to the side on it.
What?
From what I've heard, Instants is a near direct clone of another app called Locket. I don't know anything about Locket. The way Instants works is you take a picture, and it sends it to all your friends. Friends are people you follow and who follow you back. You can add a short caption, or make one close friends only, but that's it. The whole gimmick of Instants is that everything is without filters or editing. You can see your past Instants, and post a recap to your story.
The viewing experience is certainly strange. All of the Instants your friends took are put together in a stack, and you tap through them to go to the next. Each Instant expires after 24 hours, and once you view one from a friend you can't view it again. You can emoji react or reply with a message to them, but that's about it. Screenshots and screen recordings are also blocked.
And that's the entire feature!
Why?
My guess is way the developers intend you to use Instants is definitely to take a bunch of pictures of every mundane moment of your life, basically a visual stream of conscious. I can get the idea, but I think it's dumb. So far, everyone has taken a bunch of pictures of themselves or their pets, and that's about it. From what I heard, most people weren't even aware that it was sharing these pictures, as the whole concept is so confusing.
Instagram is so confident that this feature will take off that they even made a dedicated app for it. The app offers the exact same functions as the feature on the Instagram app, but the app instantly opens to the camera. Who is using this enough that they dedicate 200 MB of their storage to it? Not to mention that every single time someone sends an Instant Instagram will send you a notification. I got 14 notifications at once from someone who thought the app was lagging and accidentally posted a ton of black squares like its 2020.
Nobody asked for this. And don't tell me that developers need to ship features people didn't know they needed, because nobody needs this. This just seems like a diet version of stories. If Instagram wanted people to be more "authentic" why couldn't they add a label to stories taken with the story camera containing no edits?
Instants is a feature that I see suddenly vanishing in a year, similar to TikTok Now. A shameless copy of another app that nobody asked for, and one that barely anybody will use 3 days after its conception. For the first time ever, Meta's daily active users declined for a quarter and you can tell that they're panicking. But everyone has been saying for many years now that Instagram is bloated with features.
You can browse jobs on Twitter, play Cut the Rope on YouTube (granted, Facebook had games a long time ago, so can I really complain? Yes.), play a Roblox clone on Instagram, date on Facebook, and play crappy games on Reddit (seriously, why are so many platforms adding games). At what point do we need to put the Claude agents down and stop adding things to apps?
Hey, I remembered to add italics this time!