Instagram Anonymous

Hi,

I’m Lena, and I’ve been off of instagram for 462+ days now.

This could be a thing you know? And if you think I’m poking fun at it, I really am not. After ‘quitting’ instagram I had more than just a couple of people asking me variations of ‘how is it going??‘ or ‘are you okay?‘ or ‘how do you cope?‘ or ‘where do you get the news??‘ or ‘what do you scroll through these days then?‘ or ‘how about the memes???’

I confess the memes were a tough cookie to swallow. You do get good memes on instagram, but… there are alternatives! Pinterest is one of them, or you know, the wide web in general… Let’s start at the beginning. Or the beginning of the end (cue the drama!).

The Beginning of the End

It’s been more than a year now that I quit instagram. I can even pinpoint the exact date it happened. Maybe because it was right after my birthday last year, or because it was such a huge deal in my life. I want to believe the first.

I can give many reasons why I did it, but the main thing for me was my kids. I wanted to model good behaviour and a positive relationship with technology. While I was reading ‘The Anxious Generation‘ by J. Haidt, I found myself agreeing with mostly everything written, and if I was to make my own kids follow a rule, then I should probably follow it myself as well, and that was it. I quit instagram. I did not delete my account (that would be a next step, I told myself), but I made a copy of all my photos and stories, and bid everyone goodbye. People asked me why. I replied I was fed up with it, but I had to really think about why… and I didn’t have a good answer.

Looking for that Codeine

The days and weeks that followed were a toughie. I kept looking for alternatives. I kept trying to find that codeine¹, you know? This didn’t seem wrong at the time, it just felt… necessary. I wanted to continue sharing, I wanted to continue to feel creative!… Newsflash: it didn’t work.

I tried moving to the Fediverse side of the internet. Bluesky, Mastodon, even opened an ‘omg.lol‘ account, but something was off. It just wasn’t the same.

First it took me about 53874 years to figure them out. That made me feel f*cking old, man. I’m not old! Yes I’m old, but not *that* old. I had spent my teenage years in mIRC channels, knowing different codes by heart and now I was having a nightmare of a time trying to figure out how to post a picture! Did I have to choose a place?? Was it the fosstodon.org or the Mastodon.social or the pleaseJustLetMePost.org or noidea.wtf, or…….. In the end imirc.ed.out. (pun intended)

The point was that I felt I needed a whole instructions guide. And after banging my head on the wall a few times I thought ‘I’m a semi-smart person, it shouldn’t be this difficult’, so I just gave up. Mind you, I did learn how to post and to even post photos (yay!) (told you I was smart! I watched a tutorial on YouTube), but the thrill wasn’t there anymore. There was no shine. And I was okay with that. Finally.

Instead of Doomscrolling

I remember feeling a bit inadequate for a few days, but it wore off. And let me tell you, I did sooo many other things instead of doomscrolling!

• Instead of feeling shit about my body like it’s a problem that needs solving, when seeing ‘perfect‘ looking people, I read more books;

• instead of looking at the simple life photos taken with a professional camera and a light ring, I journalled;

• instead of feeling guilty and pressured because ‘share this or you’re part of the problem‘, I listened to more audiobooks;

• instead of not feeling enough, and looking at the perfect moms and the perfect lunches and the perfect patience (and somehow(!) also a podcast!), I spend more time with my children and my husband. Without phones.

During the following months, after leaving Instagram, I had people ask me ‘how are you doing (implied: now that you have left the grid)?‘ This made me feel like I was an addict and I was on the recovery program, and I adamantly denied that was the case. I wasn’t addicted to Instagram! I was just there, sharing!… and getting addicted. This, however, wasn’t solely my fault. You see, all these apps are purposely designed to toy with our emotions, and make us (alas) addicted.

Not my fault! (mostly)

Cal Newport, in his book Digital Minimalism, compares facebook, instagram and the sorts, to slot machines and the variable reward system (this comes from B.F. Skinner’s behavioural psychology). You don’t know if you will get 3 likes or 300, and that unpredictability is exactly what makes you addicted. Newport is pretty blunt regarding the addictive qualities in these apps/platforms. They were engineered to maximise engagement. The likes and comments tap into a very primal need for social approval, and that intermittent feedback keeps you coming back in a way that consistent rewards never would. And this is not just psychology fluff. Aza Raskin, the designer who invented infinite scroll has spent years publicly regretting it. Sean Parker, founding president of Facebook said in 2017, in an interview, that the platform was built to consume as much of your time and attention as possible, and that they were deliberately exploiting a “vulnerability in human psychology“. He just said it. Out loud. Tristan Harris, a former Google design ethicist who is one of the most prominent whistleblowers on this matter has a Ted talk dated 8 years ago, where he explains “how a handful of tech companies control billions of minds every day“. So… this isn’t my fault! Right??

In theory, it is not. But my 41 brain’s fully developed frontal lobe tells me that I should have noticed this before. So, no excuses. I was an Instagram addict. And now I’m not. (And I could end my rambling here, but this post has been in the making for many months, so bear with me).

I don’t hate it

Listen, I don’t hate Instagram. I don’t (completely) hate social media either, I am not against technology, nor will I swap my iPad for a notebook and start teaching my lessons writing with chalk on a blackboard. I have a blog, a daily photo project (that I abandoned on the first day, but that’s beside the point), a Goodreads account, a Youtube account (I don’t post videos, just watch ‘running stuff‘, like my kids put it), a Strava account… I am not anti-internet or anti-sharing. But I moved on to somewhere else, somewhere I can control. Somewhere I don’t get to see a thousand photos or videos of people popping their pimples because I ACCIDENTALLY paused for two seconds on one of those.

And here’s the catch. You can’t really escape from it. A friend sends a funny video: Instagram. I need to book a restaurant: ah instagram. 25% discount on a few cans of special beer: post it on Instagram! I got my ears pierced again and had to book the appointment through… (you guessed it) Instagram. This thing has burrowed itself no deeply into the infrastructure of our daily lives that sometimes, not having it, feels like not carrying your ID. You are okay! But things can be just a bit more complicated.

And I am also not going to pretend IG is all bad. If I had a motto in life it would be something like ‘all things in balance’, so I know there are good things too. Instagram gave small creative businesses a fighting chance. It introduced me to photographers whose work actually stopped me mid-scroll. It had (hopefully it still has) moments of honest, inspiring content that felt real and warm and human.

And let’s not forget the ‘friends and family’ caveat. How about all the babies that will be born while I’m away?! Well… if this connection you feel for these people is that strong, shouldn’t it be added on by something else that requires a bit more work than just double tapping on your phone screen? Maybe a text, that isn’t a reaction to a story?

Instagram has this way of making you feel connected to everyone while slowly making you feel like you are not quite enough for any of them. All the curated content is just that. Curated. Specifically chosen. I get it. Real life doesn’t perform well. It doesn’t get the same likes, the same reach, the algorithm doesn’t push it. So you stop seeing it… and you start measuring your own very unglamorous, very real, very beautiful life against a work of fiction. And somehow yours always seems to come up short. This is terrible for your mental health. But hey, just refresh your feed and see if you feel better! 😉

462 Days Later

Four hundred and six-two days later (I had to change this number so many times, because I added to this post so.many.times….) I don’t miss it. I miss some of the people. Some of those I’ve texted, had drinks with, or lunch, or dinner. As for the rest I think I was just watching their stories and mistaking it for knowing them. Though I still believe I created some real links with some real people. But it will stay there, in the confines of Instagram.

I ended up here. On the same blog I’ve had for aaaaages (way before instagram was born). I also sometimes check Substack (I still don’t exactly know how it all works, but the writing is good! Though most people don’t credit other people’s photos, which bugs me). I sometimes go on Threads, because, pretty photos; but this one feels like the distant cousin who wants to reel you back in, so I don’t go there often. I also continue reading, working out early in the morning, and running. Oh I ran a Half-Marathon! I really did! I didn’t post a picture of my medal, but I can assure you I have it!

I’ll have enough ammunition to tell my kids: social media will rot your brain, so no phones until you are 16! And then I’ll explain why, and my experience with it. So I ended up scrolling less, living slower and quieter. I haven’t seen someone popping pimples in a long time. That’s a win. So far so good.

If you made it through this very very long post… Thank you. And if you’re thinking of leaving IG or social media platforms, I’m not going to tell you to do it. But I’ll tell you this: the withdrawal is real, but the other side is genuinely fine. Much better even. Turns out real life actually performs really beautifully. It just doesn’t need an audience.

1. Codeine is an opioid used in medicine not only as a painkiller but also as a harm-reduction tool in the treatment of addiction. When someone is dependent on a stronger opioid like heroin, going cold turkey can be dangerous and often unsuccessful. Instead, doctors sometimes prescribe milder opioids (codeine among them) to ease withdrawal symptoms, reduce cravings, and give the body a gentler pathway off the stronger drugs. The goal isn’t to cure the addiction overnight, but to make leaving survivable. Don’t be alarmed as to how or why I know this: this is part of the Chemistry syllabus I teach to my students. ↩︎