Kim Kardashian West may be the unofficial queen of Instagram, but it seems the reality star is second-guessing that role since now that she’s a mom. Kardashian West wants Instagram to ban likes because of their potential effect on people’s mental health — including her kids — and says she’s grown more cognizant of the effects of screen time and social media since becoming a mother.
Instagram has been testing out the new feature of hiding likes for a while now, and it’s been met with mixed results at best. After all, an entire industry of influencers has been built on using “likes” as capital — with a like count gone, how will people know how successful they are?
Given Kardashian West’s own monetization of her Instagram, her favorable stance on banning likes is a bit surprising. At the New York Times DealBrook conference, she phrased her support like this: “As far as mental health…I think taking the likes away and taking that aspect away from [Instagram] would be really beneficial for people.”
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“I know the Instagram team has been having a bunch of conversations with people to get everyone’s take on that and they’re taking it really seriously, and that makes me happy,” Kardashian West continued. While she personally doesn’t find that Instagram affects her mental health, she knows that’s not the case for everyone.
“I struggle with having to step outside of how I feel and thinking about, ‘What if one of my children was like one of my friends who wasn’t as mentally strong and would really be affected by the comments?'” she tells the conference. “That would really affect me.”
Kardashian West has essentially already secured her empire, so maybe it’s not surprising that she’s happy to let Instagram likes be a thing of the past. But her comments on monitoring screen time — given that we picture the Keeping Up with the Kardashians star permanently attached to her iPhone — did throw us for a loop.
“When I raise my kids, I think about screen time, phone time, what to post, what not to post,” she divulged. We’re glad the mom of four is taking the time to reflect on these important issues. Honestly, between Kim monitoring screen time and Kanye not letting North wear makeup, it sounds like the Kardashian West household is actually pretty strict!
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