Every morning, I open Instagram, not to scroll my feed, but to tap through stories. They vanish after 24 hours, yet they somehow feel more real than the carefully posed photos below. When Snapchat first introduced this idea years ago (posts that disappeared instead of staying online forever) it seemed strange. Why share something that won’t even last a day? But now, from Instagram to Facebook, WhatsApp, TikTok, and even LinkedIn, almost every platform has a “Stories” feature.
So what happened? Why did social media, once obsessed with preserving everything, suddenly start to revolve around things that disappear?
Snapchat launched its “Stories” feature in 2013, introducing a radical idea at the time: communication that doesn’t stay. This was a huge shift from the Facebook mindset, where users collected photos, posts, and comments like digital souvenirs. Snapchat flipped that logic completely: moments became temporary again. People could post unfiltered pictures, share jokes, or show parts of their daily lives without worrying they’d stay online forever.
The concept spread fast. Instagram adopted “Stories” in 2016, then Facebook, WhatsApp, YouTube, and even Spotify followed. What started as a quirky Snapchat gimmick became the new social media default. Now, every app seems to be built for the same type of content: quick, casual, vertical videos that disappear. The difference between platforms feels smaller every year, and “Stories” might be the biggest reason why.
There’s something deeply human about temporary sharing. Stories play on two major instincts: the fear of missing out (FOMO) and the craving for authenticity.
Because stories only last 24 hours, there’s pressure to check them constantly: before they vanish. This urgency keeps us coming back, over and over. But on the flip side, their temporary nature makes posting feel safer. A bad selfie or messy room doesn’t seem as risky when it’s gone tomorrow.
That’s part of why stories feel “real.” They’re closer to how we experience actual life: fleeting, imperfect, full of passing moments.
There’s also a performative side to it. We know exactly who saw our stories. That viewer list turns storytelling into a performance. It’s not just sharing, it’s showing. You’re posting to be seen, but only by the right people, for the right amount of time. Media theorist Sherry Turkle once said that social media turns life into a performance of self. Stories make that performance feel more spontaneous, even though it’s still curated. We’re authentic, but only for a day.
Of course, it’s not just psychology. There’s also a business reason for why every platform adopted stories: they keep us hooked.
Ephemeral content creates a daily cycle of attention. Because posts disappear, we feel we need to open the app every day to stay updated. For platforms that survive on engagement and ad views, that’s perfect.
Stories also fill the space between big posts. You don’t need to craft a whole caption or upload a perfect photo, you can post anything: your coffee, your walk, your face. The more effortless it feels, the more often you post, and the more time you spend on the app. Stories are the perfect blend of low effort for users and high engagement for companies. They’re designed to be easy for us, and addictive for them.
Social media used to be about archiving our lives: collecting and displaying memories. But stories mark a shift from memory to presence. They’re about what’s happening right now. This shift might say something about how we view ourselves in the digital age. Maybe we’ve grown tired of everything being permanent. The internet never forgets, and maybe stories give us a small sense of control again. When things disappear, they feel less risky, more private, more like real life. At the same time, this constant cycle of short-lived content can also make life feel fragmented. Our attention gets stretched thinner and thinner, as every moment becomes a potential story to share before it’s gone.
Maybe because permanence has become exhausting. We’ve lived online long enough to know that the things we post can follow us forever: screenshots, memories, old photos, awkward statuses. Stories offer the opposite: freedom. They let us live online without leaving too much behind. But they also reflect something deeper about our generation’s relationship with time. We’re living faster, not just in real life, but digitally too. Moments don’t need to last to matter anymore. What matters is being seen, even if it’s only for 24 hours.
Stories have changed how we share, connect, and remember. They’ve turned social media into something more temporary, more performative, and somehow more personal.
It’s ironic, though, that in trying to make our posts disappear, we’ve made our presence more constant than ever. Every 24 hours, there’s something new to see, something new to post, something new to watch before it’s gone.
Maybe that’s the paradox of digital life: the more temporary things get, the more time we spend chasing them.
I really appreciate a look at just the stories feature of social media, because it is the aspect that I engage in the most, similar to what you said, both for posting and keeping up with people.
There is a pull to constantly check them, and make sure you don’t miss them, also out of respect for friends, knowing they can see if you’ve viewed their stories or not. It’s easy to forgive someone for missing a post or not liking it, because you don’t know if it just never made it on their feed, while with stories you do know.
Because of the fact that stories do feel more spontaneous and random I think they are a bit strange if you do not know the person. Take influencers. On their end it is great because they are constantly able to upload low effort content and people will always be checking it, but on a personal end, you are then watching the more unfiltered or intimate moments of someones life who you don’t know. That’s why I try to slowly hide influencers stories just because i’ve found that it gives me less to look at for people that I personally don’t engage with. I’m curious if many people started doing this if instagram ( or other socials) would take away this feature because they would be missing out on engagement?
I still vividly remember the day that Instagram added the ‘Stories’ feature to the app. I must have been about 14-15. We were all shocked. Why was Instagram copying SnapChat? Why have another app that does the same thing? It felt wrong. SnapChat was for exactly that – snaps. Temporary, often unfiltered, glimpses into people’s lives. Instagram, like Facebook, was for the more fixed representations of self.
While my friends and I may have been initially shocked by the introduction of Stories to Instagram, over-time our engagement with Instagram Stories has outlived our use of SnapChat. So I suppose it was good business.
I think I disagree with your point about authenticity, though. Sure they vanish after 24 hours and were intended to capture moments that perhaps wouldn’t otherwise be shared in a user’s main feed, however, I think they have also become very curated and inauthentic. It’s become common practice to upload a photo from your camera roll to your story, allowing users to select which image they like best. The days of bad selfies and messy rooms are gone, I’m afraid.
However, I think that the homogenisation of the apps, as you point out, really affirms that the psychology being used to develop these platforms is obsessed with making us obsessed. The Stories feature worked on SnapChat and drove user engagement – so every other app has followed suit. I am interested whether this was designed with the knowledge that it would reshape our minute-by-minute undertaking with social media, or whether the psychology of engagement was the only driving thought behind it. Definitely food for thought!
This is such a fresh perspective. I had never considered apps like Instagram or Snapchat in this light before, and your blog has given me a lot to think about. I see it as a form of self-expression or self-representation. As you mentioned, users feel much less psychological pressure when using these features, since the content doesn’t stay on their profile, whether they are satisfied with what they’ve shared or not, it disappears after 24 hours. It feels more like a smaller-scale, more relaxed conversation.Because users can see who viewed their content, interactions become more cautious, simply viewing something already counts as a form of attention. People might even bend the truth in a private diary, so in this format, a certain degree of “performance” still exists. We are crafting our own image in a lower-stakes way, one that allows more room for trial and error. As for why platforms design such features, I think there is also a subtle element of “scarcity marketing” at play. Because content disappears automatically, users are encouraged to pay closer attention. It’s like a “today’s special” menu which strengthens their engagement with the platform.