Your Boyfriend Isn't Your Camera Man

“Her need for me to catalogue her life is slowly draining my soul"

Screenshot: Reddit

Last week I came across this video on X. A camera pans around a picturesque landscape and, everywhere you look, women are posing for photographs: 

We’ve all seen it: a guy taking pictures of his girlfriend or wife, getting down on the floor, adjusting to find the right angles and lighting. She takes the phone and checks through the pictures, isn’t happy, and he tries again. 

This has become normal now. Enough so that we have articles about the “The Instagram-Husband Revolution.'. Men’s magazines provide tips on “How to take a photo of your girlfriend” (“Don’t just take one! Stop doing exasperated sighs!”). Meanwhile, girls are told, “Don’t date boys who won’t take pictures for your Instagram,” and taught “How to Train an Instagram Boyfriend” (“He is the key to documenting your life, growing your brand”), as well as how to thank them properly (“thank you for going on adventures with me to find the perfect spot to take a photo”). There are even Facebook and Instagram pages called “Boyfriends of Instagram'' dedicated to capturing this phenomenon. Plus endless TikToks about boyfriends never getting it right, along with memes and articles about why they suck at it. 

@dilaratortumluIt‘s a fulltime job & he‘s part of this team, no other choice!😂🤣 Tag your supporter📸 Markiere deinen Supporter #fyp #relatable #humor #humour #couple #vacation #urlaub #picture #girls #bf #sommer #content #influencer #creator

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@chiarakingmy poor boyfriend #skitok skisuit is from @BOSS

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Boyfriends and husbands complain about this online, too. Some say taking pictures of their girlfriend feels like a full-time job. Others explain how entire trips were ruined by it. This Reddit post about “having difficulty playing boyfriend of Instagram” has over a thousand likes: “Her need for me to catalogue her life is slowly draining my soul.”

Of course, there’s nothing wrong with your partner taking occasional photos of you. I can see how it might make people feel more connected to each other’s lives. But I think there is something wrong, there is something worth talking about, with this compulsion to get pictures. There’s something wrong with a compulsion that can ruin the moment; with judging every experience in terms of likes, leaving it joyless, and with demanding your partner document you, over and over. Of course, we don’t all behave this way, but many—more and more of us—do. Not just girlfriends either—friends demand it of friends; family members demand it of each other; it’s happening all the time. 

I don’t mean to mock here. I think Gen Z has every technological and commercial incentive in the world tempting them to do this. They are told that their faces, bodies, and personal brands are of paramount importance. They are taught to tie their self-worth to virtual validation. Of course it’s become normal, and it’s no wonder we defend it. But when we really think about what’s happening here, when we zoom out a little, I don’t think this is trivial. 

I don’t think it’s trivial, for example, that we’ve been conditioned to use the person we love as a tool—a tool to gain approval from an audience that most of the time we don’t even like or care about. I don’t think it’s trivial that the compulsion to document the perfect memory can degrade the memory, turning it from that time we watched the sunset together on the beach to that time we argued after I demanded Instagram photos and you couldn’t get the angle right. I don’t think it’s trivial that some people sacrifice their real-world reputation to improve their online one. These things matter.

It matters, too, that social media isn’t just putting unnecessary pressure on us as individuals, but also on our relationships. Now, everything that used to constitute a healthy relationship– love, loyalty, pride in our partners–has been distorted by new online demands: you have to take photos of each other, put enough enthusiasm into it, regularly post them on your social media accounts, like their posts, tag them in photos, comment on their selfies. We’ve reached the point where we’re asking “Would You Break Up if Your Partner Won’t Post You on Instagram?” 

In chapter 8 of The Anxious Generation, Jon describes six ways that the phone-based life fosters spiritual degradation. They include making us egocentric (believing that “it’s all about me”) and blocking our ability to experience self-transcendence from the beauty of nature. An Instagram addiction is therefore spiritually degrading.

And actually the most dystopian thing about this, I think, is that it’s another example where the virtual world is becoming more real than the real world. There’s this popular phrase “Instagram vs Reality” that emerged in the early 2010s to capture the contrast between our appearances, relationships, and lifestyles, online and offline. I think it’s outdated now. For many young people, Instagram IS reality. At the very least we’ve all had times when we care more about capturing the perfect picture than living our lives. In those moments, who cares what your actual relationship is like! Or if the actual experience is enjoyable! Or if your boyfriend hates taking constant pictures of you and arguing about it ruined your holiday! The virtual world is what matters. The real world is just in the way; it’s an annoying loading screen. Other people become props for Instagram posts. Beautiful sceneries are backgrounds for selfies. And the pressure can be so intense that some of us don’t even go on holiday to relax anymore, we can’t; we have to get content. Everything must be marketed and performed. Girls especially feel this pressure to portray perfect lives online. “I recently watched two late-teenage girls have a 90-minute photo shoot right in front of my family,” reads one of the comments on Reddit, “Jumping, whipping hair, pensive staring at the sea, over the shoulder coy look. When they were done taking pictures, they packed up & left the beach. They came, took pictures & left.” 

As part of our movement to Free the Anxious Generation, we are encouraging Gen Z and Gen Alpha to reclaim life in the real world, and spend less time on screens. But I think there’s something important to emphasize here. This is not just about spending less time on social media. It’s also about spending less time thinking about social media—corrupting real-life moments by obsessing over capturing them. That’s how we fully reclaim life! By not just moving away from screens but away from seeing moments in our lives as content, from seeing picturesque landscapes as something people will click, from seeing our loved ones as tools to get likes. And moving, as much as we can, towards being lost in the moment; towards being lost in the people we love. 

And look: Gen Z is lonelier than ever. We talk about how disconnected we are. We say we’ve never felt more alone. I guess what I’m trying to say is this: be careful you’re not complaining about feeling disconnected while at the same time treating your boyfriend like a tripod. Be careful not to disregard the people around you and then demand they take your pictures. Maybe part of why we feel lonely is because we put too much time into our virtual lives now; we invest too much in our online networks and not enough in our real-life relationships. But as technology continues to encroach on our lives and everything becomes more commodified and inhuman, our intimate relationships should be a refuge. They must not be strained or sacrificed. Everything now is default public. We need to set the defaults back to private. 

Have you seen the ad for the new iPad? A huge hydraulic press crushes everything—guitars, record players, board games, books—into their new device: a flat black rectangle. All I Need Is You plays in the background. 

People were outraged. How dare they crush art and creativity! How dare they flatten everything physical and human! But aren’t we doing that all the time? Crushing our own intimate moments into content? Grinding our real-life experiences into something good for an Instagram grid? Compressing our lives, experiences, and memories into something other people can consume? 

We need each other. More than ever. As new technologies crush and replace everything that’s real and intimate, we should protect our relationships as much as possible. As social media platforms press all of us to take part, let’s not put unnecessary strain on each other. Take some photos, sure. But as the pressure to post more, perform more, and create more content presses down on all of us, let’s keep those we love out of it. And then, let’s step out of it ourselves.