What is Instagram?

What is Instagram?

Instagram is a popular photo-sharing app for smartphones. Compared with other social networks, Instagram is relatively simple—it's focused exclusively on sharing photos with your friends.

Why use Instagram?

At this point, you may be thinking: Why do I need a separate app for sharing photos? Couldn't I just post them on Facebook or another social network? One reason for Instagram's popularity is its simplicity. Rather than focusing on a lot of different features, Instagram has only one core feature, which makes it especially easy to share photos and see photos from your friends.

Filters are another reason people like using Instagram. Whenever you take a photo in Instagram, you can quickly apply a filter to give the photo a unique look. Filters can help transform an ordinary photo into something worth sharing without much effort. For example, take a look at the photo below:

As you can see, filters can give you a lot of flexibity with your photos, which also makes them more fun to share with your friends.

Is Instagram appropriate for everyone?

Like most other social networking sites, you must be at least 13 years old to create an account on Instagram. While you may occasionally encounter some inappropriate content on Instagram, it does have strict rules banning nudity and other types of offensive posts.

About this tutorial

Rather than use traditional screenshots and videos, we created our own Instagram posts like the ones above to show you how to use the app and provide examples of what you can do with Instagram—you'll find these throughout the tutorial!