I’m Quitting Instagram

It’s an announcement that only about 450 people will ever see, and significantly fewer will care about, but here it goes…

I’m quitting Instagram.

(And Facebook and Twitter, too.)

As I’ve made this decision, I can’t help but feel a little sad.

I’m 26 years old. Social media has been a part of my life for more or less a decade.

My mom wasn’t quick on the uptake with the early social media craze of the 2010s. I thought it was archaic that she wouldn’t let us get cell phones or Facebook accounts. Everyone else at school had them — it felt almost painful to be left out of the loop.

But honestly? I am so glad now that my mom was so hesitant then.

I got my first Facebook account when I was 16. I was up late on the desktop computer my family shared, upgrading all my real-life friends to Facebook friends. I took a selfie using the camera on our iMac and uploaded it as my first profile picture. 14 likes and 3 comments later, and I was floating on air.

I was online now. Everything felt different.

Due to my lack of an Internet-equipped phone and the subsequent need to log onto Facebook on our home computer, my social media plunge wasn’t too deep in high school. I remember when my friends first started using Instagram, but I didn’t really get it. It seemed like more of a photo-editing app than anything else, but I remember their excitement when they would hit 11 likes (because then the names would go away and all you could see were the numbers.)

I graduated high school in the same oblivion, but in college I was the grateful recipient of my very first smart(ish) phone. Instagram ensued.

My mental health was, um, not great that first year of college, but I thought I knew exactly why (bad at friends, bad at life, etc.)

With the benefit of hindsight, though… I was way off.

My mental health was bad because I wasn’t taking care of myself, and Instagram was a major reason behind that.

To be clear, I’m not a victim here. The IG life didn’t choose me, I chose it. Every time I logged on, I was chose it again.

I’ve gone through periods of deleting and reinstalling it. I’ve cancelled accounts and started new ones. I’ve blocked people, added people, grown followings and decreased them.

I’ve been angry at people I love for things they’ve posted online (and for things they’ve stayed silent on.) I’ve thought of myself as an expert on things because I read a few posts on Instagram about it. I’ve argued with people who I’ve never met over things that don’t matter.

I’ve ended relationships because of Instagram.

Oh, and in the meantime, I’ve given almost a decade worth of data about myself — my likes, my hobbies, my bad habits, my desires, my political views — to soulless corporations who have mined that information to make money off of me.

Like the marketing expert said on The Social Dilemma, “If the service is free, then you are the product.”

Even with all this, it’s taken me years to build up the emotional ammo to bite bullet and delete my accounts (mixing lots of metaphors here but it just feels right.)

I got three diplomas, held multiple jobs, started my career, got married, and had a baby before I finally decided enough was enough.

There wasn’t one, cataclysmic event that sent me over the edge. It was more of a slow burn.

It was watching kids get sucked deeper and deeper into their phones, to the point where they can’t function without screens or fall asleep without the iPad.

I don’t want that for my daughter.

It was feeling angry or unsettled without knowing why, until I realized it was a reaction to something I saw on Instagram that morning.

I don’t want that for myself.

It was watching political discourse and social fabric get ripped apart, bit by bit, until they felt almost irredeemable.

I don’t want that for my country.

It was watching people debate the veracity of accounts coming out of Ukraine and slowly start siding with Russia because of the misinformation on social media.

I don’t want that for our world.

Michael Jackson got it right when he beep-bopped around the stage and sang, “I’m starting with the man in the mirror. I’m asking him to change his ways.”

I’m starting here, with me. I’m a drop in the social media ocean, but I can’t hope things will get better for others until I prove the theory of change in myself.

I made a list last night, as I downloaded my Instagram data and uploaded my photos to Chatbooks (I’m not a total hard ass — obviously I’m going to make a scrapbook), of all the reasons I’m doing this.

I should hesitate to recommend anything to anyone, because what the hell do I know? TV shows that I like might be awful to someone else. Restaurants I frequent are probably subpar to others.

Even the things I hold most dear -the values and beliefs I’ve based my life around- I should hold back from recommending any of it, lest someone take me at my word.

But this is going to work for me, and if that at all resonates, feel free to steal the idea.

Sam’s List of Reasons for Deleting Social Media

1. It makes me angry.
2. It makes me grumpy.
3. It diverts my attention from my family.
4. It distracts me from my work.
5. It distracts me from my writing.
6. It’s making me a worse person.
7. It fuels comparisons.
8. It sells my data and makes money off of me.
9. It makes me angry at people I love.
10. It decreases empathy.
11. It makes what I say meaningless.
12. It eats away at my precious mortality.
13. It draws me away from God.
14. It distracts me from what matters most.
15. It makes me stupider.
16. It makes me look stupid.
17. It makes me say stupid things.
18. It makes me feel connected to people in ways that aren’t real, which actually keeps me disconnected from people.
19. I’m fighting the power.
20. The change I want most in the world is unity and peace. I have to be that change, and those things can only come offline for me.

Phew. Time to go read some books.