Meta launched a new app on Wednesday, called Instants, that integrates with existing Instagram accounts and allows users to send unedited, disappearing photos. Instants leans into the popularity of Instagram’s Stories feature and Close Friends lists, where users can selectively share images with a smaller audience.
Instants is available as a stand-alone app on iOS and Android in select countries, and it’s accessible through Instagram’s direct messaging tab.
The core of Instants, from its name to the bare-bones layout, is designed to evoke a sense of ephemerality. Yes, it's a conceptual clone of Snapchat, with images that disappear after viewing, which can also be unsent before the person on the other end views them. (Instagram’s Stories feature, launched a decade ago, was also influenced by Snapchat.)
Unlike Snapchat, Instants is much more focused on capturing raw moments, like the once-viral BeReal app, and doesn’t allow any filters or retouching. That's striking for a company that helped make sepia-toned filters like Valencia household names, and is hell-bent on adding generative AI to every other corner of its apps.
There’s one specific kind of raw image I fully believe adult users will be sharing with their Close Friends list through Instants: dick pics.
Instagram’s Close Friends feature, which arrived in 2018, earned a reputation as a way to share thirst traps. As a gay man living in San Francisco, I’m fully aware of what I’m going to see when someone adds me to their list and posts to Close Friends. No one’s posting full hog on main—that would be blocked by Meta—but there’s plenty of skin on display in those green bubbles.
Similar to Instagram, Instants is available to teenage users. Even so, content posted on either app may feel adult in nature. While Instagram’s community guidelines ban posting most kinds of nudity, with exceptions for sculptures and breastfeeding, in practice, the main feed on my Instagram is full of ass shots—nothing frontal. Images posted on Stories just to Close Friends lists, rather than being more publicly shared, often seem to avoid the stricter moderation rules. The Instants app is governed by the same guidelines as the main Instagram app.
Even though this isn’t a secure way to share your nudes, I expect Instants to be the next evolution of a Close Friends thirst trap. (Meta did not immediately respond to a request for comment.) It’s easy to set your Instants only to be sent to those already on your Close Friends list, and you can unsend photos that someone hasn’t opened yet. In addition, screenshots of your shared snaps are blocked by default. (Though, in a world where many households have multiple cameras, it’s easy to snap a pic of a screen.)
When you open the Instants app, you’re immediately greeted by an image of your own face staring back at you on the screen. The sparse layout includes buttons to flip the camera, turn on the flash, and see the Instants you’ve sent. There’s no option for video, only still images. A level of discretion is also given to your friends who view these images; users aren’t notified when you peek at their images, and only the person sharing the Instant can see your replies and reaction emojis.
In a way, any app or feature that’s promoted as ephemeral messaging will lead to spicy pics shared between adults. Snapchat was seen the same way at its launch, with a 2012 Business Insider headline reading: “Let's Be Real: Snapchat Is Totally Used for Sexting.” When Twitter, in the pre-Musk era, shut down a feature where users could post ephemeral tweets that disappeared after a day, called Fleets, many terminally online users spent the last day celebrating the feature with unhinged, skin-baring posts.
Instants—joining a growing repository of Instagram apps like Edits and Threads—may not stick around as a stand-alone app, but there will always be a segment of users who want to send cheeky shots to their friends in ways that feel less permanent than texting the group chat—and while horniness is universal, from my experience, it's a lot of gay men.
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