Kylie Grunsfeld, Staff Columnist
I have deleted Instagram — my primary vice — many times, and each time I’ve felt my body become instantly lighter, my energy increase and my anxiety ebb, even if only slightly.
I’ve gone weeks and months without Instagram. Its absence makes me better for reasons I need to constantly remind myself of, because otherwise I become tempted to return to the very thing that steals so much of my life.
Being offline forces you to be present
How many times has someone had to repeat themselves because you were so busy scrolling that you forgot to listen? How many times have you been in the car, the bus, the train or even walking and you’ve missed a chance to connect with your surroundings?
I notice so much more when my attention is not being monopolized by Instagram. Little sights that enrich my days despite their briefness — a squirrel digging in the mulch, a baby smiling at me, a piece of beautiful architecture. These moments are what make life. These opportunities to appreciate our humanity are often lost when we choose to let algorithms snatch our awareness.
You’ll become a more patient person
You can never really reach the end of the algorithm, so it’s absurdly easy to get used to having your cravings satiated as quickly and as frequently as you desire. There is no such thing as having to wait for the next video — except in the case of slow wifi — or putting down your phone because you’ve seen all there is to see.
Making a habit of impatience can spread to other areas of your life. Spending five minutes without stimuli feels like five hours. Waiting is a natural part of life, and yet we’ve grown accustomed to rarely having to experience it.
Boredom is important
Ideas and acts of self-reflection sprout from boredom’s soil. When you have no choice but to drift off into thought, you have the chance to learn more about yourself. To untangle complicated feelings. To hypothesize, imagine and eventually create.
Instagram is constantly selling you things
While yes, you can tailor the type of posts that are pushed onto your feed to your interests, there are some things you have no control over encountering — like advertisements that are also perfectly tailored toward you. Not only are they obnoxious, but so frequent that they completely disrupt your experience.
The last time I scrolled on Instagram Reels, there was about one ad for every two videos. That means if I watched 100 videos in a session, a third of them were attempting to sell me a product.
The algorithm is an echochamber
Especially if you only get your news from social media. If you only follow like-minded people and watch videos of those who align with your views, your understanding of current events runs the risk of being extremely narrow.
Nuanced perspectives aren’t easy to find on Instagram — not when the app is literally designed to show what you want to see.
Instagram doesn’t have your best interest at heart
Meta, the parent company of Instagram, was brought to court last month and attempted to defend itself from claims that its social media websites are “harmful to children’s mental health and in violation of state consumer protection law.”
They lost.
Instagram doesn’t care if you are using it unhealthily and struggling to maintain boundaries. It doesn’t care if you are losing precious years of your life to something designed to be as addictive as possible.
The jury decided that Mark Zuckerberg and Meta are more concerned with turning a profit than creating an app that is beneficial, let alone safe, to use.
Social media exacerbates feelings of FOMO
When you can see what friends and strangers are doing as they are doing it, you become hyper-aware of everything happening you aren’t a part of. Parties. Concerts. Hangouts. Sometimes what they say is true — ignorance is bliss.
Being unable to watch the world go on around you, without you, can actually be a blessing. Getting rid of Instagram won’t cure your FOMO, but what’s out of sight tends to be out of mind.
You lose the opportunity to discover things on your own — other people do it for you
I know what the summits of several hikes look like, despite not going on the hikes myself. Because I watched a random person climb to the top of a mountain and look out over a beautiful view, I can never experience the awe of seeing that same view for the first time myself.
There is something to be said about discovering things entirely on your own. Living vicariously can be wonderful in small doses, but when all of your excitement is second-hand, it may be time to ask yourself if it’s enough.
It skews your perception of real life
This is not news, but it’s also very easy to forget. In case you needed a reminder: Instagram is a curated space. People show only what they want to show. Gritty, unaesthetic, unimpressive life does not go viral, so why would anyone be incentivized to present a raw experience that will not get attention?
You don’t have to quit cold turkey
I think this is the biggest thing that keeps people from getting rid of social media: the idea that once you delete an app, it has to be gone forever.
Many people communicate with friends and family through Instagram DMs. They keep up to date on what’s going on locally. They stay in touch with old or long-distance friends via their posts. Deleting Instagram doesn’t only mean getting rid of the negatives, it means getting rid of the positives too.
But consider this: you can delete Instagram off your phone and use it over a computer instead, making it harder to access but not impossible. You can delete it for the week and redownload it for the weekend.
Breaking a social media addiction doesn’t have to be all or nothing. Watch how your life changes when Instagram no longer has power over you — because I promise you, it will change.