Dogs and puppies are the new stars of Instagram during lockdown

Working from home and sheltering in place has led to a rise in animal adoptions, and new dog owners are showing off their pups with their own Instagram accounts

Certain breeds such as bulldogs and pugs are popular, but experts warn social media doesn’t highlight the issues and health problems these breeds can have

Reading Time:4 minutes

Forget Kylie Jenner or Bella Hadid – the influencers that are taking over Instagram during lockdown are canine – like those pictured on @ellabeanthedog. Photo: Instagram/@ellabeanthedog

Published: 8:45pm, 28 Jul 2020Updated: 6:39pm, 29 Jul 2020

Mochi has an eager smile, an enviable wardrobe and some killer dance moves. He hangs out at the pool a lot and sometimes takes trips to local vineyards, all of which he documents for his 8,000 Instagram followers. He is also a dog, one of the many new canine users on the platform.

On the heels of the pandemic puppy boom, Instagram has swollen with a new crop of dogfluencers. Mochi’s a good example: his owners had planned to get a puppy in autumn, but sweeping coronavirus restrictions left them with time on their hands and nowhere to go. They brought Mochi home in April and started his Instagram account immediately.

If a pandemic is a good time to get a dog, it’s also a good time to build the dog’s following.

Stuck at home, people are spending lots more time online. In one global survey at the end of March, 43 per cent of people said they were browsing social media more because of the pandemic, second only to streaming movies and television shows.

That social media enthusiasm isn’t equally distributed. In the United States, dogs are more popular than cats on and off Instagram, and right now, puppies are ascendant.

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