Honestly, I can’t believe I did. But I had to.
I was spending more than 4 hours of screen time a day on Instagram. Just uselessly scrolling my life away *tears*
I’m going to be completely honest here. After deactivating my Instagram account I've been in such a better headspace. I know why, too. The thing with Instagram was that besides it taking up so much of my time, it was negatively contributing to my mental health. There is so much content meant for consumption on Instagram. Opening up the app would mean that I’m allowing myself to be vulnerable to all the good and bad content on the platform. Do I really need it?
My Instagram account was a public, business account. I shared a lot of my writing on it and used it to promote my writing content and professional skills. But I also posted a lot of my personal life on there as well — filtered of course. I’d go on Instagram to see what everyone in my family and social circle was up to. And then after doing that, I’d get drifted in the Explore page. To justify my time on social media, I started following all these writing-related and marketing-related pages. But as you’d be able to guess — I was never on Instagram for professional growth. Instagram had always been the social media platform that I’d use “for fun.”
I grew up hearing from my parents that “you are who your friends are, the people you spend the most time with.” I believe that because I was spending so much time on Instagram, I was starting to *become* like it. I was spending hours on end on IG and started housing all of the content I was consuming into my head. Subconsciously, I knew that almost all of the content I see on IG is filtered, unrealistic, profitable. Everyone is trying to make everything look good. This starts to make you think, why doesn’t everything in your life or around you look good too?
Besides the mental alleviation, getting rid of IG has allowed me to focus on all the right things. I’m no longer concerned about what people may think of me based on what I post. So many times, I’d scroll past IG stories, and feel like I am missing out. I’m no longer focused on what others are doing in their life. And if I’m not focused on other people’s lives, it gives me more time to focus on my own.
What I’ve understood about social media is that the time we spend consuming content (or anything for that matter) starts to consume our lives — positively or negatively (that’s up to us to decipher). Having said that, Twitter is better than Instagram… I’ll talk about it more in the next post!
