A post I didn't think I'd write
(yet another "I'm quitting social media" post)
There’s no point burying the lead: I’m going to delete Instagram.
Well, not entirely - I’m going to keep the little account I have where I share photos of my kids with close friends and family, because at this point it’s still the most efficient way to do that, but for now my plan is delete the app entirely and just download it once per month or so to upload a few pictures. I’m also not going to delete Facebook because I’m in a few groups that are genuinely very useful to me. In any case, Facebook doesn’t tend to pull me into the endless scrolling that IG does; I already have a pretty culled friend list over there.
I resisted doing this for quite a while, not because I didn’t think it was a good idea, but because I find the “I quit socials” club a bit smug. Much like the “no screens for my kids” club, or the “I never buy from Amazon” club, it tends to be a decision that is shared with an air of much self-satisfaction. And fair enough, it’s ok to be a little self-satisfied about making choices that are difficult and against the mainstream, yet have born fruit in your life. It’s still annoying though, ya know?
I hesitated to write this post, because I thought that doing so might de facto land me in the Smug Club, and maybe it will, but I guess I wanted to make it clear that I truly do not think there is anything wrong with using social media. Even if you kind of wish you could extricate yourself from it but just feel like, for whatever reason, it’s too hard right now - that’s ok. Nobody is living totally according to their ideals across the board, and it takes a certain headspace to make a medium-sized life decision. It’s also ok to actually like social media! Truly.
It hadn’t been on my mind at all to (mainly) bow out of Instagram. As I’ve mentioned a few times before, in January last year I deleted Instagram from my phone and put it on the iPad, and that went a long way to improving how I used the app. It meant I stopped the endless, mindless scrolling, and became more intentional about logging in. The app is also very clearly intended to be used on a phone, and so having it on the iPad was adequately clunky that the amount I was posting, either to the grid or to my Stories, reduced significantly.
Nonetheless, I decided to log out for Advent because I noticed that I was increasingly picking up the iPad to go on IG, and wasting precious nap time downtime scrolling. Again, that’s fine if you actually enjoy it, but usually it didn’t make me feel good. I started to realise that I wasn’t missing it, and in fact I wasn’t really even thinking about it. I chatted about it a bit with
, who wrote a popular post about her decision to quit social media, and realised that any reasons I’d previously had to hang around just didn’t really exist anymore.I am no longer under any illusion that my presence on Instagram is going to land me a book deal. Lots of the people I enjoyed following have moved over to Substack, so I can keep up with them here, and others I communicate with via WhatsApp. Ultimately, I have to accept that there are some people who I’ve enjoyed chatting with on IG who I will simply lose touch with. That’s an inevitable part of any transition - I lost touch with people I genuinely liked after school, after each degree, after each time we moved, and that’s just part of life. This is another instance of leaving something behind, which will involve leaving people behind.
Perhaps the biggest reason of all for me is that, to use an annoying Catholic expression, it’s an occasion of sin. I find myself thinking very unkind things about people simply because they posted or shared something I don’t agree with, or that lacks nuance. Even though I know that of course everyone’s lives are much more complex and complicated and hard than they appear online, my brain struggles to compute that as I look at photos of people’s aesthetically pleasing homes and joyful families, or whatever it is. I grow jealous and resentful and a little petulant. And I also know that I present a distorted picture of my life. I’ve always tried to be fairly honest about the hard parts, but ultimately there is only so much that is appropriate to share about our private lives online.
(A couple of weeks ago, I took a really cute photo of my two older kids in front of the Christmas tree, wearing Christmas sweaters and smiling with their arms around each other. It would have made a perfect Christmassy IG post. But then one of the kids got mad because I said they were being silly, and that kid grabbed my phone out of my hand, hurled it across the room, and I started yelling. I sent the photo to a few friends after, and felt compelled to tell the full story - which we rarely get when we see cute IG posts).
This is certainly not a renunciation of tech, or screens, or even my phone. I’m married to a technical engineer who loves coding and is excited about AI; our kids watch TV and occasionally play video games with their dad; and I don’t think it will impact how much I use my phone since I haven’t had it on my phone for a year anyway. It’s just a way to drown out some of the noise, and hopefully to redirect a bit of my mental energy to writing here on Substack. This isn’t a “resolution” or some kind of self-discipline. I just feel like it’s time. I’m ready to let it go, and so why wouldn’t I?
If you’re still reading, I hope this didn’t sound smug or preachy. I’m giving an account of why I’ve made this decision, but I’m not suggesting that you should do the same unless you genuinely want to. There are enough things to feel guilt and shame and inadequacy about, no? Insofar as I will miss anything about IG, it will definitely be the personal contact and genuine friendships I’ve developed with people over there, so please: be in touch! I love hearing from internet strangers who become friends. (There are four people I met online who have become IRL friends, and I’m hoping that number will increase by at least one in the coming year,
!)Enjoy these last days of 2023, or if that’s too much, try to look forward to the clean slate that’s now just a few days away. And don’t be strangers - I truly do love hearing from you!
Good for you! Although I'll miss our IG friendship but like you said will be good motivation to come on substack more!
I so envy you. I feel like I want to quit insta but I never actually do it. You’ve got all my admiration.