It happened one night in September, while putting Bub to sleep. Cuddled up next to him, in the quiet dark, it’s when I get my best ideas. It occurred to me that I should take a break from Instagram, more so for my own curiosity than anything else. Can I live without Instagram for an entire year? I think I’d like to try.
I love posting photos and scrolling as much as the next person. I’ve met amazing, kindred spirits on the platform whom I’ll miss during my break. I’m worried about missing out on important information and creative ideas other people have.
But by taking a break, I’m hoping I’ll discover something more valuable: my originality. Maybe I’ll make more connections in-person rather than virtually. Maybe I can truly focus on making myself happy for my own soul’s sake.
When Instagram was down for a day in October, I genuinely felt relieved and liberated. For once, I wasn’t turning to my phone every chance I got and checking other people’s posts and how many likes and followers I had. Knowing that the rest of the world wasn’t posting anything, I didn’t feel the FOMO. It was kind of glorious.
I wanted more of that feeling.
I want to know what it feels like to not need other people to validate me - through their likes, comments, and shares. I want to know what it feels like to instinctively turn to a book instead of my phone. I want to know what it feels like to take photos of people, places and things because I want to treasure them, not to post for likeability.
I’m excited to disappear for a while, to relish in the silence.
In Thomas Moore’s Care of the Soul, he writes:
So, the first point to make about care of the soul is that it is not primarily a method of problem-solving. Its goal is not to make life problem-free, but to give ordinary life the depth and value that come with soulfulness.
As an introvert, I crave depth and focus, neither of which I get from Instagram. I need to step away to find what else can make me feel creative, feel fulfilled. It can’t be surface-level social media. I don’t want to be the person who opens the app to look up one thing and finds herself still scrolling 30 minutes later. I don’t want to waste 29 minutes and 18 seconds anymore (my daily average on the app).
Psychologically, I hope a break from Instagram will keep me from constantly comparing myself to others. In Renee Engeln’s book, Beauty Sick, she writes about social media’s impact on making women feel less than and more depressed:
High levels of social media use are correlated with:
greater internalization of the thin beauty ideal.
more self-objectification.
more frequent social comparisons.
higher levels of disordered eating.
more desire to have plastic surgery.
greater investment in appearance.
increased depressive symptoms.
15 years of using Facebook and Instagram has absolutely shaped the way I think about others and my own confidence. They’ve impacted the choices and purchases I’ve made. They’ve subconsciously made me compare myself to other people’s highlight reels and feel depressed that my life isn’t picture perfect.
Say, on average, I used Facebook and Instagram for 30 minutes a day for the past 15 years. (Though, before I had a kid, my daily average was probably two hours.) That’s 164,250 minutes or 2,737.5 hours of my life I’ve wasted reading other people’s rants, stressing about my own posts, and comparing myself to everyone’s photos.
I think this break is overdue.