With the Coronavirus continuing to upend familiar rhythms of life, leaving schools shuttered, millions out of work and billions stuck at home, those looking for ways to pass the time have gotten creative.
In the absence of jam-packed calendars, people are turning to social media challenges in droves.
Some bring together families for choreographed dance routines while others spark the inner artist or unlock hidden engineering skills.
All of them hold the promise of warding off boredom and — maybe — earning users a moment of online celebrity.
As you can see in these screenshots, posted by reverse engineering expert Jane Manchun Wong, the Challenge sticker would be added to the regular sticker tray in Stories.
When applied, you’d then be prompted to tag friends to participate, while as you can see down the bottom of the screen, there’s also an option to ‘search challenges’ within the hashtag field, based on trending content.
Once you find the challenge you want to participate in and film your content, you can nominate friends by tagging them directly in the Story.
This makes it easy for them to repost and follow along. Suppose you get a notification that you’ve been tagged in someone’s Story challenge.
In that case, you can either repost the slide with a special message like “I accept this challenge!” or tap the challenge sticker to fulfill your duty immediately.
In your post, be sure to tag the person who nominated you originally so that they can see your contribution, and then tag new friends to keep the challenge going if you want.
For this test, everyone will be able to participate in challenges, but only a limited number of challenges will be available.
A few weeks ago, Instagram also launched the ‘Stay Home’ and ‘Ghar Pe Raho’ stickers, allowing users to see how others are practicing social distancing during the lock-down.