I am an Insta-addict! I joined Instagram around 5-6 years back and soon started spending hours browsing through the content. Over the years, the time I spent daily on Instagram has remained constant – averaging on 1.5 hours every day! During my MBA, when we hardly had any time since classes and submissions were so hectic – I’d still find time for Instagram, browsing through it in the middle of classes. I’m not on any other social media platform other than WhatsApp which I don’t really count as social media because it is more of a necessity these days.
So why did I like the gram so much and what has changed:
- I like photography and travelling. Instagram is the perfect platform to showcase your photos and tell your travel stories. I started travelling a lot over the past three years and it was a great platform to showcase the photos I took. Everything has changed this year – over the past few months, there has obviously been no travel – I don’t have much content to post but I feel this pressure to keep generating content.
- Before Instagram was taken over by hordes of influencers, Instagram had really good travel content. It was a great platform to help you plan your travel itinerary. Now with most people trying to be influencers – it has a lot more garbage and filtering through the hordes of nonsensical posts to find good content has gotten harder. If you go through travel pages – you’ll find the same content regenerated again and again by different bloggers. Eg: In India – you will find the same 4-5 Taj Mahal shots, redone by them bloggers.
- Till about 2-3 years back, Instagram was a great place to find outfit/fashion inspirations especially for special occasions like weddings. Now there is a lot more sponsored content. Also, following all these fashion bloggers acts as a trigger for people including me to shop more.
- Fewer people were on Instagram because of Facebook’s popularity. This meant that only people serious about photography/content were on Instagram. Now most people have moved to Instagram and Tik-Tok to post content which means there’s more content and the quality of content has fallen a lot.
After reading Kae’s post on her 30 day Instagram detox and spending a lot of time in the past few months on Instagram, I have finally decided to do an Instagram detox. I’ve tried doing this over the past two weeks – I’d delete the app only to install it after a few hours. So to be serious about this, I’ve disabled my Instagram account today morning. I have done 48 hours detoxes before but this time I’m going to try to detox for atleast 7 days. The goal is anywhere between a week to two weeks of detox. Here’s hoping I am able to do it.
Are you a social media addict? How do you manage the time you spend on social media? Any tips to get through the withdrawal symptoms?
Stay safe! 🙂
Happy Panda 
I do agree with your post. Instagram sometimes becomes really toxic just when there was a debate going on between YouTube Vs Tiktok. That’s when I took a break from instagram for about 15 days. I hope your break from instagram becomes successful. All the best 😎👍
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Thank you for the motivation. ☺️
Yes, it gets very toxic! 🙈
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Yessss! This is exciting. I hope the detox turns out great and is freeing for you! My tip will definitely be to plan out a few things to fill up that extra time!
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Thank you for the tip!!☺️
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I think what can help when you feel the itch is to read or watch something about how bad social media is for your health. Even though I’m not tempted to return to my old eating habits, it’s still great to occasionally absorb content on the benefits of a vegan diet, so maybe you can apply the same principle.
After I got off my #365daysofgratitude challenges, I’ve been weaning myself off of IG. Not because I necessarily wanted to but it naturally happened as my life has gotten really small with just work, chores, and home. This isn’t a bad thing but IG makes you feel like you have to always bring fresh content.
Taking Twitter off my phone helped, I briefly look at FB because it’s like another inbox essentially. What’s crazy is the longer you are off of IG the easier it will be to stay away. Just hang in there. It will be worth it. Also, have you heard of Cal Newport? He’s a good person to listen to about social.
Good luck. You can do it!
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I had to google the #365daysofgratitudechallenge and Cal Newport!
All great advice – thank you so much! 🙂
Its day 2 and I already find myself thinking lesser about IG. I even managed to finish this novel yesterday that I had been postponing reading. 🙂
Hope you’re doing well!
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Awesome!!! Thanks, you too! xxoo
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It IS easy to get addicted to social media! I have no Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter accounts, and I think that’s a pretty good thing because I would spend too much time on them.
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I totally feel you, girl.
When I first took Instagram, I decided that I would only follow the bare minimum. Instagram was a platform to sate my love for photography, but again, I started to have thoughts similar to yours. I even thought of deleting all my social media accounts. I have Facebook and Instagram, and it already feels like a lot.
I haven’t taken a detox lately, though I’m definitely lowering the doses haha.
Might even decide to say bye-bye some day, who knows.
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I left Facebook 3 years back. I think that was easier than doing this detox now. 🙈🙈
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Oh dear, you’ll get through. It’s just a few more days! Power to you!
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amazing work!
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A necessary break I believe for you.
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