A life without Instagram
Lessons from 17 months sans scrolling
I once read an interview with a vegan chef whose story frequently comes to mind: He grew up eating fast food three times a day, supplemented with bags of Doritos and Oreos. He was addicted to junk food, he said, but in hindsight he doesn’t recall ever enjoying it.
Fast-forward to his 20s when a health scare changed his relationship with food; he started by cutting out red meat, then eventually went entirely plant-based within months. He became enamored with fresh produce and began cooking creatively and elaborately with vegetables, leading to a new career.
As an experiment, he interrupted his regularly-scheduled plant-based programming with a fast food lunch—a throwback treat he assumed he would relish.
On the contrary, it disgusted him. He felt sick and shaky afterwards, overly full yet not satisfied. He realized that had been his standard feeling for decades, during which he never stopped to question, “Do I actually like this? Is this the way I want to feel?”
That’s exactly what happened to me recently when I went back on Instagram for the first time in 17 months.
I’ll occasionally log in via desktop to seek out a specific account, and I download the app on my phone when I want to post publicly (but I don’t follow anyone there, so it’s purely output).
But I haven’t opened Instagram to see a stream of photos/videos/stories since February 2022…until last week. And I had the experience of the chef who ate a fast food burger after months of fresh plants: disgust.
I think I audibly said, “Arhdfdghdshaueww!”
It was so shocking and over-stimulating and I couldn’t get the videos to stop and there were like ten things advertised to me within moments (and I wanted them all).
It reminded me of walking into Times Square or my first night in Tokyo where I couldn’t process any words or feelings beyond all the neon flashes and fluorescent ads. Too bright, too loud, too much.
The Stories were the worst part: dozens of quick frames in a row that rotated through: Footage of an ongoing conflict in a foreign country, an aggressive take on why we’re all wrong about something, a thirst trap, a funny meme, a vacation selfie, a quote about self-care, a happy dog, a disheveled celebrity, a fundraiser, a sale on socks, a devastating disaster.
I just had 25 feelings in one minute.
I can’t believe I used to flip through these while waiting to cross the street, or in the minutes before falling asleep. I would envy someone’s vacation, feel helpless in the wake of a news story, feel superior in agreement with a hot take, and feel inferior in comparison to a stranger’s bikini pic, all within moments, all while wondering why I felt low-level irritable all the time and couldn’t get anything done.
Now listen: I don’t think there’s anything inherently wrong with social media! And I don’t think I’m a better person for being mostly off it, although (let’s be real) I did feel like this guy for a while:
One of my favorite history anecdotes is about how Socrates warned that the hot new technology of “writing things down” would lead to memory loss, inattentiveness, and distraction from wisdom. One of the oldest pieces of writing from Ancient Egypt frets that the new generation and its novel inventions will destroy culture.
So I try not to get a bee in my bonnet over tech stuff. It’s a tool, and you can have a regulated relationship with it or not. I did not have a regulated relationship with Instagram.
The biggest revelation that led to me essentially quitting Instagram was that I realized I was never happy when I went on. I don’t mean that the app didn’t make me happy; I mean that I was never in a good mood when I decided to open it in the first place.
It was always when I was agitated, lethargic, absentminded, lonely, numb, tired, frustrated, bored, or feeling empty in some way. I never went to it because I was in a joyful state of mind. It was an elixir for me to get a quick hit of sensation, rarely offering me any actual sustaining delight or appreciation.
Much like the vegan chef who wondered in hindsight if he ever even liked the taste of junk food, I wondered why I routinely participated in something that didn’t contribute to my alive-ness, but in fact stopped me engaging in activities I do enjoy.
It wasn’t fun for me to dislike my own actions. I want to like myself and I want to respect the way I spend my time. Instagram was impeding both.
So I went off, on Valentine’s Day 2022.
At first I felt disoriented, even scared. Mostly because I didn’t realize before how much information came to me via Instagram.
It’s where I got a lot of my news stories. It’s where I learned about pregnancies and job changes, both my friends’ and complete strangers. It’s where I learned about what’s cool, trendy, and meme-ing. It’s where I learned the word “unlearning.”
Right away, I started feeling really out of it! I value knowing what’s trendy and I’m also a big nosy snoop who appreciates being up-to-date on all the hot goss.
I quickly noticed that I and others used social media as a sort of massive group text or current events distribution, and I missed out on some big personal announcements and breaking news. (For example, I only read the weekend newspaper and had no idea why the sky was orange in NYC for two days.)
But after a short while, I made peace with not knowing what my friends were up to in real-time; I much preferred hearing their dispatches directly. I was still a part of the actual group texts.
As for my own personal posting, I liked the opportunity to give friends a lot of context for my updates. When I got engaged, for example, I didn’t “publicly” announce it anywhere except here. (My former single self is so disappointed that I didn’t use one of the many captions she imagined for the some-day announcement.)
I liked telling loved ones all my thoughts and feelings about it, the way I would back in the old days when I’d write loooooong emails to friends detailing every one of my hopes and hesitancies about a life change.
It was a little weirder to feel out of the loop about news, which, again, I didn’t realize so often came to me first from social media. Especially because, in the past few years, I’ve noticed a tendency for folks to moralize keeping up with current events. “You need to check your privilege if you avoid reading the news,” I’ve heard (always online, never in person—another reason to quit Instagram!).
But I disagree.
I’ve become a better person since cutting out news-reading from my daily routine, if you can measure a good person by their actions to help others.
When I’m not overwhelmed by images and details on every worldwide crisis, doing small things for those around me feels significant: picking up litter, or scooping up an ant in my kitchen and bringing him outside, hauling cans to the food pantry, taking care of senior citizens’ pets.
I really believe that humans were never meant to consume so much news; though the benefit is international solidarity, the risk is overwhelming despair. And for me, that completely disrupts my motivation, rather than encourages it.
Maybe the real problem isn’t overabundance of access to information, but the invasive nature of it. In both political and spiritual realms, I’ve always self-identified as “seeker.” I like going out, into the woods or churches or protests or city alleys, and drawing my conclusions from there. I’m a reader, observer, and interviewer—always seeking to understand more about this insane place Earth that has never felt like home but still captivates me.
I don’t like the experience of information, or feeling, coming to me. I want to go to it, or at least be surprised by it.
As I was reading Unseen City, a book I loved in June, these inklings clarified as the author described bird-watching as an antidote to the daily drudgery of managing twenty tabs open at once on his computer:
“Sometimes my mind snaps under all this stimulation and I enter a sort of fugue state in which I maniacally click from one window to another without accomplishing anything.
But I’ve found that spending five minutes watching birds on my front stoop is a reliable cure for this frenzy…I suspect this if because watching the birds allows me to exercise a very different part of my brain. Instead of receiving hundreds of digital jolts coming in from the outside, all specifically directed at me, me, me! I’m reaching outward. Instead of being at the focal point of a million strands of information, I am an outsider trying to connect.”
This was my experience leaving Instagram: an outsider trying to connect. I had to actually ask my friends about their lives; I needed to seek out the news and grapple with my own perspective on it. I had to observe what was cool and trendy rather than being told about it; I had to spend time discerning what my values are instead of being handed them in a bright pink bullet-point list.
In a previous newsletter I wrote about the holiness of response: the mystery of being moved or provoked by some art, and unresponsive to others.
In this one, I suppose I’m writing about its contrast: the cheapness of reaction.
I am so, deeply, truly uninterested in reaction (which is why I don’t read the comments on my public Instagram account). But I am so curious about response: the mysterious sacred moments when we are compelled into action (often unwitnessed by others) or invited into new ways of thinking.
It’s the difference between seeing a painting through a gallery window and pressing my nose up against the glass to visually memorize it, versus being force-fed a print sale. It’s the difference between underlining a passage in a book that moves me to shiver, versus being handed an easily-re-grammable graphic of a quote that I suspect I’m supposed to find profound. It’s the difference between happening upon a street musician who brings me to tears versus the music I never asked for that blasts through my scroll.
The responses are glorious moments, hallowed moments—some of the most significant moments of my life.
Here’s another small daily distinction between the two:
Almost every day I take the subway, and I never know who I’m going to see on that train. So, I pray that God would direct me to the train car I’m supposed to be on, for whatever reason. I will always give at least a dollar to anyone who comes on the train and asks for money, and I will observe the folks on the ride with me. I believe there’s a reason for me to be there, so I engage as such.
This is a really different experience than the one I had previously, where I’d scroll and scroll on Instagram to take me away from any unpleasantness or human-ness that I was experiencing on the train. Don’t let me be reminded of suffering, don’t let me feel inferior, don’t send me into a spiral of judgment, I’d command my phone. Take me away, numb me, protect me. I don’t want to be here.
Now, I have no other choice. Obviously Instagram isn’t the only app that exists; I could easily beg of Angry Birds to do the same. But Instagram was my particular vice, so getting rid of it has catapulted me into a new reality.
Of course, it’s not everyone’s vice!! My mom follows a panoply of strange gay men who bring a lot of smiles to her day, and I smile when she sends me a post she loves. I know many fabulous artists whose work is finally seen and appreciated and bought via Instagram. I miss a lot of wonderful account creators that I can’t find in other spaces.
And I (very gratefully!) started my current career on Instagram, though it soon morphed into a place I don’t recognize and I do wonder if I’m out of integrity for continuing to post on my public account (“Is it like a vegan who sells meat?” I recently asked my agent).
None of these contrasts or questions will ever be crystal clear, just as Socrates may still be unresolved to see what “writing things down” has led to in this era.
New tools are confusing for all of us, and there is no right or wrong way to use them. But when I find myself using a tool for reasons other than delight, creativity, exploration, intimacy, seeking, or sacred response…I know it’s time for me to step back and question my relationship with it. And my relationship with Instagram is simply a relationship that I had to part ways with.
In this season of life, I’m examining where else I’m simply reacting as opposed to responding to, and trying to wiggle my way into integrity accordingly.
Ooh, I love this, Mari. I've taken hefty social media sabbaticals in the past — including a year off Facebook prompted by Zadie Smith's way-back-when review of The Social Network (?!) — and the recent overstimulation via algorithmic shifts have me considering giving it all up again. IG has been a real creative outlet for me as a writer over the years, something that has felt, when I'm participating as a maker and not just a consumer, like a really solid outlet — but I've also noticed that I'll post for the masses when the main person I want to see it is just a (much more vulnerable) call or text away, that the public hits on private news are less and less satisfying, that logging on feels like getting ASSAULTED and there's no way to subvert the algorithm / shape the platform to your actual intentions, etc. – but I haven't yet made the full move to a quieter but more demanding longform platform like Substack (where I worry I'll feel like I'm writing into a void / won't be able to help but pressurize my output). But! One of my guiding mantras right now is "When it's time, I know, because it gives me pleasure to live into my decision" — that's the spirit in which, for instance, I gave up alcohol a year ago — and I feel a lot of pleasure in reading your words which has me saying Hmmmm. This has been a year of semi-painful (or painful-painful) recognitions and responses – so maybe this is the next one leading to joy (and if not a full break, a reckoning with my own intentions that could shift the shape in a joyful way). Thanks always for the illumination. xx
Wow this is so well timed to read! Literally deleted all my socials on Saturday ‘for the weekend’ and haven’t missed it AT ALL so haven’t gone back! Already feeling so much more present and so much more in control of my feelings AND feel my stress level has dropped a few degrees! I’ve now made a conscious effort to sign up to email newsletters for all my favourite creatives. It’s a shift I was too scared to make but one that just feels so right!