What Instagram taught me about myself

Recently, I decided to go on another Instagram fast. I looked back and remembered how good I felt when I went on my last “fast” in 2020. I had clarity, increased productivity, and an interest in real life. In the final days of 2021, after one last doom scroll, I decided I had enough of feeling anxious about the future of humanity, mindlessly consuming content about COVID-19 and its gang of variants, and explaining for the umpteenth time how vaccines work in my DMs. Among other things.

I also wanted to live my life instead of watching other people live their lives. I wanted to stop comparing myself to others and be at peace with who I am – whoever that is. So, I posted one last time to say “goodbye” and I bounced.

After being off of Instagram for about five days I started to, dare I say, miss it. The first few days I felt fine, besides constantly opening my phone to open the app only to *begrudgingly* find it wasn’t there. I wasn’t missing the anxiety, comparison, and the never-ending bad news about the world. But for some reason, I really began to feel the sting of not being on Instagram.

I didn’t know what it was or why I was feeling this way. When I deleted Instagram in 2020, I felt happy and free. Not this time. And then I realized something. I realized that the sting I was feeling was a few things: boredom and loss. Boredom, because before I got rid of Instagram, I was scrolling for an embarrassing amount of time each day – it was how I spent much of my time. Loss, because well I was missing the filler. The filler for time, boredom, sadness, procrastination, etc. that is Instagram.

I then remembered that back when I deleted Instagram before, I was actually doing stuff to fill my time. So, I started reading more and focusing on doing other things that I enjoy. I thought for sure that would make this pesky feeling go away and make me feel productive and happy. Yeah, no.

This worked for a few days but then the feeling came back – emptiness, a gap of sorts. Knowing I didn’t want to go back to the app that I was essentially addicted to, I decided to stick it out. At the time, I was reading a book called Live, Love, Explore by Leon Logothetis – a book about finding your purpose and the life you’re supposed to live. It has all these cool writing prompts and exercises to help you think about purpose and fulfillment. I’m a self-help junkie, so this was right up my alley.

Anyway, one of the exercises was to write out your big dreams. As I was thinking about who I want to be in this life, it hit me. The loss I was feeling from not taking a scroll on Instagram in a week was actually the loss of being immersed in an environment that I (with the help of “the algorithm”) created that represents my ideal self.

A consequence of no longer consuming never-ending doomsday content was that I was also no longer viewing images of people I admired, a life I was interested in living, and places I wanted to go. I no longer had daily inspiration of sorts. Which is both a good thing and a bad thing. It meant I had to figure out who I wanted to be on my own, without the help of random Instagram Influencers.

I typically give Instagram a lot of flack (because it deserves it, damnit). I hate how addicting it is, how much time it causes people (read: me) to waste, the anxiety of being on it, and how it can very much be a proxy for your mind. But on a more positive level, we see ourselves – our ideal selves – on social media. We create these avatars of who we want to be, we follow people we want to emulate in some way, we post to tell a certain “story” of who we “are.”

I realized that my Instagram account was a direct reflection of who I want to be: a successful writer, renowned healthcare professional, an avid reader, a coffee connoisseur, a woman who’s strong and healthy and looks good in a swimsuit. I am these things on some level, but my Instagram account is filled with content that I and others create that represents these things on a higher level.

Losing that was hard. And that’s not even the saddest part. The saddest part was that the feeling of loss after deleting the app meant that all of that inspiration and ideals weren’t actually real. Not in a physical sense. Everything I was trying to portray or emulate was not happening in real life. I’m not nearly as fit as I want to be, I hadn’t finished a book I started 3 months ago, healthcare feels bleak sometimes, and I drink the same boring cup of coffee day in and day out.

This made me realize that instead of living my life, I was fantasizing about it. And fantasies keep us busy, don’t they?! So busy, we don’t realize we’ve been fantasizing and theorizing our way into oblivion. That we’ve been watching others live out their lives from the cheap seats.

The cool thing, though, is that we can be inspired by social media in a healthy way. And not be consumed by it. The next time you’re scrolling and find yourself immersed in comparison, jealousy, and perhaps unworthiness, pay attention. How does your life on social media compare to your life as it is? How does it compare to the life you want? Who do you follow and why?

Comparison and jealousy are actually really cool because they’re giving you insight into what you want for yourself. It’s truly inspirational. We can be anyone we want online. And our online and social media presence can be the blueprint for who we can be in real life (with the exception of people who are axe murderers and other horrible things on social media; please do not use that as a blueprint for your life). This can lead to happiness and fulfillment.

I learned that Instagram is a mirror. Instagram taught me what my ideal self looks like. And I saw a discrepancy between that ideal version of myself and myself live and in color. And now, I get to do something about it.

What about you?