Are Instagram and TikTok Killing Creativity or Just Making Everything the Same?
Open Instagram or TikTok and you’re met with an endless conveyor belt of short videos. Fast cuts, trending audio, captions flying across the screen, all designed to grab your attention before you swipe to the next thing. The platforms have made their position clear: they want video. If you’re a photographer, you have to ask yourself the harder question — are these platforms actually helping our craft, or are they slowly killing it?
Video gets the platform’s love
The algorithm plays favourites. Video gets pushed harder, shown to more people, and almost always gets better reach. That’s why so many photographers are chopping their stills into slideshow reels, adding a bit of pan-and-zoom, and calling it a day. Some have genuinely embraced video work. Others are doing it because they feel they have to. This isn’t always about creative choice. It’s about survival in the feed.
The TikTok attention span
The TikTok generation’s attention span has collapsed. People now consume content in quick, forgettable bursts. Video feeds that habit perfectly. Photography works against it. A still asks you to stop, take it in, and absorb the details. It doesn’t flash past with a sound effect. It sits there and demands your time. In a world built for distraction, that can be a strength — but it also means photography is fighting an uphill battle for attention.
Social media and the sameness problem
Look closely at your feed. On both TikTok and Instagram, the same styles, the same editing tricks, and the same trending audio repeat endlessly. The platforms reward what’s already working, so creators copy it. The result is a sameness that blurs everything into one big mass of interchangeable content. Photography isn’t immune to trends, but a still image has more freedom to stand apart visually. It doesn’t have to be tied to a viral sound or a trending transition to work.
Is photography being pushed aside?
This is where it gets uncomfortable. If the platforms are built to favour video, and audiences are trained to consume content in short bursts, photography inevitably takes a back seat. Over time, the skills, patience, and attention to detail that strong still photography requires get eroded. The danger isn’t just that fewer people see photos. It’s that fewer people value them. That’s how a craft gets diminished, and yes, that’s how it could die in the eyes of a generation.
What a single frame can do
Video gives you motion, context, and progression. Photography gives you the exact fraction of a second when everything aligns. The apex of a corner. The rain drop suspended mid-air. The one expression that tells the whole story. You can live in that image. Study it. Come back to it tomorrow and still see something new. That’s why photographs from a hundred years ago still matter. They outlive the people in them. They become the evidence of history and the anchors for personal memory. Nobody gets nostalgic about a 20-year-old VHS tape buried in the loft. But a printed photograph from the same era still has power.
Video dates. Photography survives
Video is tied to the tech that plays it. Formats become obsolete. Platforms vanish. Editing trends go stale fast. Watch a TikTok from just three years ago and it already feels like a relic. A well-made photograph, especially in print, sidesteps all of that. You don’t need the right device or software to enjoy it. You just need to look at it.
Photography hits differently
One of the biggest differences is control. Video tells you how to feel. It sets the pace, adds the music, and dictates the timing. Photography leaves the space for you to bring your own emotion to the image. That space is part of its strength.
The problem with leaning too far into video
Here’s a truth a lot of people don’t like to hear: video can hide flaws. Movement and audio can mask soft focus, awkward light, or weak composition. With a still, there’s nowhere to hide. It either works or it doesn’t. If your work can stand as a strong still, it’s strong work. If it can’t, then the motion is doing the heavy lifting.
The push for video isn’t entirely about what audiences want
Yes, people watch more video now. But the platforms are driving this shift because it keeps users watching longer, which means more ad revenue. That doesn’t mean the audience has fallen out of love with still photography. It just means it’s harder to find in the current feed. People still value a great photo. They’re just being shown fewer of them.
Printing changes everything
You can’t print a TikTok. You can’t frame a reel. You can’t hang a 15-second trending audio clip in a gallery. A print takes your work out of the algorithm’s control. It turns it into a physical object that can be passed around, displayed, gifted, and kept for decades. It becomes part of the real world, not just the digital noise.
Printing also changes the way you shoot. When you know an image might end up on paper, you start to care more about composition, sharpness, and tonal range. You’re aiming for permanence, not just likes.
Adapt without losing who you are
The smart approach right now is to use both formats. Feed the algorithm with video if you need the reach. But don’t abandon still photography. Keep creating images that can stand alone without motion or sound. And print them. Get them out into the world in a way that doesn’t depend on an app’s feed ranking.
Social media trends will shift again. Video might dominate today, but it’s only a matter of time before something else replaces it. Photography, especially in print, will outlast all of it. The real question is this — when the platforms move on, will your photography still be valued, or will it have been drowned out in the noise?