Hello, fellow individual who is fed up with social media. Since you clicked on this post, I assume you, too, are over the whole “social media” thing and are looking for inspiration to finally delete your accounts. Well, I’m here to tell you that you’ve come to the right place.
I have been off Instagram for about a month now and realized I like my life significantly more without the app. This recent decision made me think about my relationship with social media over the years and I thought it would be a great topic to dive deeply into: why I left all social media for a couple of years after college, how I ended up back on Instagram, and why I am leaving social media again.
Rant Loading…
My Brief History with Social Media
I am 28 years old and my birthday is in November, meaning I am technically a Millennial but can also be considered on the cusp of Gen Z. Understanding this, social media has been a part of my life since about middle school.
I had a MySpace page, complete with its funky background, sadgirl music, and controversial Top 8 friends. I transitioned into primarily using Facebook by 9th Grade, where my friends and I would share photos that would probably get me cancelled in today’s day and age. I dabbled in Tumblr, had a Twitter account for a few months, and made Snapchat and Instagram accounts before my junior year of high school.
As you can imagine, I was quite accustomed to sharing my life online.
This did not slow down in college. I frequently made posts of myself with my friends, had a plethora of suspicious music-lyric Facebook statuses, got into feuds with folks in comments, and had a recurring series on Snapchat I called “Whore Stories.”
I loved the attention from social media and providing entertainment to others through my ridiculous behavior.
But like All Good Things, This Came to an End
It is hard to know exactly when I started to care about likes, views, and comments, but what I do know is this was very much front of mind by the time I was a senior in college and as a recent college graduate.
I recall feeling upset if something I shared on Instagram or Facebook did not get as many likes or as much attention as the last post. I would watch my Snapchat stories view count like a hawk and feel disappointed whenever it did not hit the triple digits. I even compared how many likes I got on a photo of myself to how many likes my friends would get on their selfies. I found myself feeling upset with my friends because they received more positive attention online than I did.
My envious behavior was completely toxic and disgusting.
Instead of sharing something because I wanted to or because I liked a memory and wanted to show that to friends/family, my posting behavior was catered to pleasing other people enough to earn their approval and “likes.”
When I wasn’t actively sharing or comparing myself to others, I would watch friends’ stories and feel left out when I wasn’t invited to hang out with them or at a party with them. I would feel sad for missing out on events and regret having to work, study, stay in, or otherwise not be a part of the perceived action.
Social media was becoming primarily a source of negative emotions.
The Catalysts that Changed It All
When I decided to leave social media in 2018, my removal from the apps happened over several months.
Surprisingly, the first app to go was Snapchat.
In April 2018, I remember clicking through Snapchat stories one morning after a night out and thinking to myself: “I really do not care to watch other people live their lives when I could be living mine, instead.” A simple, but true thought.
Snapchat had become my favorite app to use over the years and yet here it was being the first to go. I informed my close friends I would no longer be using the app and deleted my account shortly after. At this time, I did not think twice about it since I still had the means to communicate with friends and stay connected beyond Snapchat.
The next app to go was Instagram.
It was July 2018, and I had returned to Florida after attending Electric Forest in Michigan. I shared a few photos of me and my boyfriend at the time. I had such a blast at the festival and expected to get tons of likes that matched my feeling of excitement for the event.
This did not happen.
I received less than 200 likes on the photo and this was enough to send me over the edge. I deleted my account. There was no deactivation or stepping away for a month or two, only full-on deletion.
Was it because I was upset I did not get more than 200 likes? Or was it because I was upset that I was upset that I didn’t get more than 200 likes?
Regardless of the true reasoning behind the action, the action was made. I understood how I felt while using Instagram, so I chose to remove it from my life.
The final social media app to be deleted: Facebook.
Although I primarily used Facebook Messenger over the web application itself, I was spending more and more time on my feed in the months leading up to leaving the app.
In late November 2018, the boyfriend who I attended Electric Forest with broke up with me. The thought of having to change my Facebook status and deal with the pain of explaining the split to whoever asked me about it made me deactivate the account and only keep the Messenger application for about another month or so.
Come December 2018, both were deleted and I was officially off of social media.
Life without Social Media
The months that followed my leaving social media were some of the most transformative for both my behavior and overall outlook on life.
During this time, I not only did not have social media but also did not have a lot of contacts in my phone to communicate with since I recently upgraded to a new one and somehow lost contacts (years later I realized it was because I did not sign into the correct Google account, but for about 1.5 years I was with my old contacts).
Truly disconnected.
Some benefits I found from deleting social media were:
- The people who communicated with me were true friends who actually cared enough to chat with me directly instead of posting on a wall or commenting on a photo online.
- I spent significantly less time on my cell phone. (Albeit at the beginning of life without social media, I would check my email a ridiculous amount of times…)
- I would attend festivals, shows, and events and not feel obligated to take out my phone and record it for others to see. Whenever I would see others do this around me, I couldn’t help but feel glad that I was no longer like them.
- I found myself living truly in the moment and for me.
- My beliefs, political and otherwise, were no longer influenced by an algorithm.
Speaking of beliefs being influenced by social media, in the fall of 2019, I watched “The Great Hack” on Netflix and was completely disgusted by what I learned. Feeling invigorated, I logged back into my Facebook account, MySpace, Tumblr, and all other social media accounts I could find, to permanently delete them.
I wanted to be wiped from the Internet as completely as possible.
Side note, why is it so difficult to delete Facebook? Not sure if the process changed since 2019, but I had to search on Google to find the landing page for me to delete, NOT deactivate, the account. Absolutely ridiculous.
My Return to Instagram
So if life was so golden without social media, how did I end up back on Instagram?
Ah, what a wonderful question. In the summer of 2020, the world was in the middle of experiencing a global pandemic and I was living in a new state with my boyfriend or ex or whatever we were at the time (yes, the same person who I mentioned before…don’t worry I will dive into that whole relationship in a future blog post). I was completely disconnected from others beyond our four walls.
Desperate to feel something that could tether me to other people and take me away from the uncertainty that was both the world and my relationship, I created Instagram again.
My initial reintroduction to Instagram was an account where I would take fun artsy photos of myself in the house or background. Sharing photos in this way led me to meeting a couple in Arizona who I had a photoshoot with at the Salt River one evening. Having social media was a success: real-life friends and an escape from my loneliness.
I also shared some of my hula hooping to this account and slowly came to realize that I was more interested in sharing my hula hooping progress than the photoshoot pictures. Thus, my “averageflow” Instagram account was born.
Check out this blog post here for a bit more about my hula-hooping journey and how plastic circles changed my life.
Hula Hooping Instagram Community
Prior to August 2020, I had no idea there was a hula hooping community, let alone an online hula hooping community. Creating that “averageflow” account and finding countless others who were doing the same thing as me was amazing.
To make a long story short, from summer 2020 – summer 2022 I met so many amazing people through Instagram and loved feeling connected to others who shared their progress and fun flow sessions.
I met up with folks who I met online a handful of times both in Arizona and whenever I would travel to new places. I LOVED this feeling of never being truly alone and always having someone I could connect with through a shared connection and passion of flow.
But like All Good Things, This, Too, Came to an End.
I would feel excited when a video or reel I shared got thousands of views, hundreds of likes, and dozens of comments from people telling me how cool whatever I was doing was.
I was once again hooked on the positive feedback and associated my worth with the engagement I received online.
I recall a post I shared of a beautiful sunset I got to experience with my current boyfriend out in the Arizona desert. We were having a blast, and probably just shared a Fireball shot, so I was grooving along with my hula hoops, the electric sunset lighting up the clouds in the sky.
This reel did not do “well.” Less than 100 likes. I was disappointed and finally deleted the app from my phone.
Was it an algorithm that changed or my desire to get certain views/likes/comments that resurfaced? Either way, by fall 2022 I recognized that the negative emotions I felt were eerily similar to what I felt many moons before. I took a 3-month hiatus from using Instagram.
Since then, Nothing was the Same
The next 18 months of my Instagram use could be described as sporadic, at best. Sure, I would share some things here and there, but it was only a fraction of the adventures I was experiencing in real life.
Sometimes I would judge images, videos, backgrounds, and even my skills in a video and use any small imperfection as an excuse not to share a video. Other times I would not think twice about the details and share what I liked.
The kicker here? It did not matter. There was no rhyme or reason as to what videos and images gained traction online and what did not. I understood this to be complete proof that things on Instagram were now officially algorithm-driven and no longer timeline-driven.
As a consumer of Instagram, I followed hundreds of people but would only see posts from the same 30 or so people. The rest of my feed would be ads and suggested content of folks living beautiful, unobtainable lives.
Is this Instagram pushing FOMO into my face? Why am I even on this app when I feel so terrible using it? Do I even care about what people are sharing? I don’t even watch other people’s Instagram stories…
My Decision to Quit Instagram for a Second Time
It is now June 2024 and I am much older than I was in 2018 yet I find myself facing the same questions I faced 6 years ago. What am I doing on these apps? Why am I using something that I feel good using only a fraction of the time? What is the point of it all?
My decision to leave Instagram was a slow one that started years ago in September 2022 but dragged on for as long as it did because I was not sure if it was a me problem or an Instagram problem.
I understand now, it was me. It is me. There is no scenario I envision where I can use Instagram or any other social media app consistently and still be happy. Or, better put, I enjoy my life more when I am not using the apps.
It also helped that Facebook/Instagram revealed that it was using user posts, images, and videos to train its AI model. Similar to how I felt after watching “The Great Hack,” news of this sent me over the edge to officially private my account and delete the apps from my phone and iPad.
Looking Forward: A Life without Social Media
So, here I am. It is nearly August 2024 and I am without my hula hooping Instagram account, without a personal Instagram, without Facebook, without Threads, without Twitter/X, without Snapchat, and without all the social networking apps I once used. (I do have a Pinterest that I use alongside this website and I like to create YouTube videos, so I still have that channel, but otherwise, I am completely free of social media platforms).
Where do I go from here?
Currently, my Instagram account is live but private. I am leaving it up at my sister’s request, but who knows how long that will last. If history repeats itself here, there will come a time when I officially cut ties with “averageflow” and move on completely with my life.
To be fair, I understand social media is not necessarily always “evil” or “the devil” and can be a useful tool. It is just not that way to me and I find my life is a bit brighter and I feel better whenever I do not use it.
You may feel better if you, too, decide to step away from social media.
I enjoy showing up fully in my life. I enjoy not checking my phone 500 times a day to see how many “likes” or “comments” I get on a post or video. I feel more in control of how I spend my time and I do not see myself returning to any of the apps anytime soon.
I hope you found this deep dive into my experience with social media as a means of comfort and support as you decide what you need to do with those apps (delete them!! Haha). I wish you well on your journey.
Much love.
