Although this has been happening for a long period of time, in 2025, there has been a large spike in the number of individuals who have been experiencing severe racism and discrimination, especially on social media apps such as Instagram, particularly the Reels section.
Blatant racism has been normalized on the internet for multiple years. Still, as time goes on, people are beginning to experience discrimination in even larger numbers than ever before. Various individuals across the web are being called racial slurs as if they are everyday vocabulary, which should not be celebrated or standardized.
As the modern era continues, more people are being influenced by social media, including people of our age group and those younger than us. Every time I open Instagram and scroll to the next video, I either stumble upon videos of my interest or random videos I do not care for.
However, sometimes some videos express racist concepts and ideals that end up on my feed, too, and every time I wonder, is this okay for a child younger than me to find? The other day, I was scrolling and found a funny video. I had my audio on mute before, but when I unmuted it, all I heard was a man chanting and screaming racial slurs, particularly the n-word.
Now, I’m not saying that Instagram is a terrible app; I personally love using it, but the fact that the app is just allowing slurs to be said and used in their audios is just outrageous.
One audio in particular has been circulating the reels section, and that song just so happens to be one where the only lyric is the n-word repeating, which was created to purposefully be offensive to black people. The fact that people on Instagram are just condoning and taking advantage of their privileges in social communication without any attempt at filtration is simply absurd.
The Instagram comment section is horrendous as well. The comments are so vile and atrocious that if a young child posted a video of them playing with their parents, the comments would express blatant hatred and extreme death threats because of how much hate speech has been normalized on the platform.
Yesterday, I saw a video a mother posted of their child who was tragically succumbing to cancer. Feeling sorry for the family, I opened the comments hoping to see people send meaningful and hopeful comments. However, the moment I opened the comments section, I knew my fate was sealed. I hadn’t read a single comment when I was bombarded with racist slurs and violent hate speech.
One user commented, “Lil (n-word) think he got time to live,” and another said, “I want what he on.”
Some of the remarks that people make in these comments are so disgusting that I can’t even list them here without it being excessive and disturbing. Another time, an Indian user posted a wholesome video with their friends, titled, “If we mention your friends’ names, they will buy you a burger.”
Despite this being a common type of video, since the user was Indian, the comment section was flooded with racist remarks.
One user commented, “Shut up, puttar tunak tunak,” and another user said, “Shut up, all of my (n-words) wear deodorant unlike you.”
The further I scrolled down, the more I began to hope that someone would stand up and defend the people in these videos, but unfortunately, nobody had the heart to do that, and instead, I felt empty.
What were originally meant to be wholesome videos about a mother raising awareness for her bedridden child, a group of friends enjoying their time together, all turned dark and discriminatory simply because people have no realization that their words speak louder than their actions.
There are different types of people in this world: people of different races, people of different religions, etc. Rather than looking at our differences, we as human beings should realize that the remarks we make on social media apps such as Instagram are not temporary, and that our comments, which we can easily send with the click of a button, can severely impact someone’s mental health and personal life. Once we say something online, the repercussions remain.
I know that people say that Instagram comments are not for the weak, but personally, I don’t think that blatant racism and discrimination should be so “normalized” in our society to the point that people look at it and think, “Oh wow, just another normal video!” or, “Just another normal comment!”
Instead of spreading nasty remarks and using racist audio for our videos, we should address the situation at hand to prevent it from becoming even more normalized and widespread. If Instagram doesn’t fix its moderation, then we should at least try to prevent discrimination like this from becoming mainstream on its platform.