Social media without the social: Pinterest as a girl's safe space

Our favourite app, and why it's in danger...

Issue #5 of Thoughts on Thursday

This week’s Thoughts on Thursday is part think-piece, part love letter. Musings on my favourite app, why it is my favourite, and why it could all be ruined.

I can imagine that there is a large crossover between Substack users and Pinterest lovers. The app, as the name suggests, allows you to ‘pin’ your interests to boards. Whether saving photos of pretty bedrooms in your house-inspo board, finding aesthetic images for your Substack posts or lock screens, or curating boards that encapsulate very specific moods with a selection of obscure photos, Pinterest is one of the most-loved apps among young women and girls.

Part of its success lies in the effective algorithm that tailors the home feed accurately to a user’s interests. Upon opening the app, it often feels as if I am presented with images I that I didn’t know I was looking for until I saw them, but that I instantly love and save. When you use Pinterest a lot, the home feed becomes so personalised and pretty that it truly does feel like a safe space. In the way that one would decorate their bedroom walls with the things, people, and colours they love, Pinterest greets users with a selection of photos that immerse them in their comforts.

Some recent examples of my home feed.

Pinterest is also an amazing tool for creative people. Its expanse of niche photos allows people to find images that fuel inspiration for their projects, whether that be reference photos for artwork or images that help writers with worldbuilding. Here is an article about how to use Pinterest effectively as a writer!

Furthermore, this app is a ‘girls’ girl’. When you search for nail, hair, or makeup inspiration, a tab at the top of the results page allows you to choose the skin tone you are searching for, making searches accessible to all hair and skin types.

Pinterest also protects users from potentially harmful searches. I like to make collages for my Substack cover images, and often use Pinterest to source photos. When sourcing ideas for my last post on body neutrality, I searched “thinspo” (meaning photos of thin people that are posted online with the intention of motivating others to lose weight). The search did not show any images and instead showed this message:

This may seem small, but it is a huge improvement from the pro-ED content that is rife on other online platforms. I imagine that other searches that would spark concern over the user’s health also flag up results like this on Pinterest, showing that this app really is a girls’ girl.

Having a digital space without the expectation to socialise or perform for others is very refreshing. Your boards are collections and curations of images that you like, to come back to and look at for your own enjoyment. I follow a few of my friends on Pinterest and love to look through their boards from time to time, and most of my boards and pins are public, but the app still feels like a very private and personalised place. Even users that choose to post as creators on Pinterest will likely receive a lot fewer comments and DMs than they would on other photo sharing platforms like Instagram. The majority of comments are along the lines of “where is XYZ from it’s so cute!”, as people primarily view images to take inspiration form them, not to judge them and award likes. Hate comments are almost non-existent.

Likes and comments are never the goal on Pinterest. It is social media that is truly about the media, not the social.

So , why is this in danger?

The first issue is AI images coming up under search results, but not being obviously labelled as AI. Not only could this be misleading, but there is a high chance that a lot of Pinterest users like me just aren’t interested in seeing AI images on this app. One of the best things about the photos on Pinterest is that real, normal people post their images there, meaning that the content on the app is aesthetically favourable over the corporate-looking images brought up with a Google search.

Second, and more prevalent, is the excessive amount of adverts that dominate the home feed and search results. Yes, they are presented in a way that doesn’t always disrupt your scrolling, but no, they do not fully blend in with the desired aesthetic of my home feed.

3 out of the 5 first results for my search, “woodland”, were ads.

I am sure that Pinterest has not always been like this. I think that the implementation of ads has been gradual, but that it is now becoming flooded. Some people already deem the app "unusable" because of these ads, which annoyingly take you to a different tab if you click on it thinking that it was a regular photo. I can tolerate it at the moment and it has not at all ruined the magic of the app for me, but it does make me wonder if anything in this world can be enjoyed without capitalist sentiment being pushed upon us.

Just something to ponder…

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Thank you for reading this week’s article! Please hit the ♡ if you enjoyed. My Pinterest is miawijay if anyone was curious!