WHY I FINALLY DELETED MY INSTAGRAM

It’s morning. You open one eye to see the first light of day, a phone screen with a 99% chance of bright, glowing, apple (unless you’re an android user, sorry). You’ve committed yourself. Why put the phone down now and wait to enter the great, vast world of social media curation until you’re fully awake when you could enter the day through everyone else’s with hazy, sleepy eyes. You’re mindlessly scrolling, liking, swiping. The glass on your phone screen clacks with each breath as one. Inhale, exhale, tap, tap, tap. You walk to your car looking down, scrolling. You drive to class and check your phone. You walk to class and check your phone, looking down and scrolling. You sit in class and check your phone. You leave class, drive home, eat dinner, and go to bed with your phone - rise, rinse, and repeat. You get the idea. But what are you checking for? What are you waiting for? What are we looking for? The endorphin pump you receive when a red box appears next to an app and you achieve the momentary gratification of feeling liked? The validation that you are seen? The social approval in receiving enough likes in five minutes to fill up your meter of self esteem until it officially proclaims “well done, your life was likable in that moment, you’re good enough now”. Have we ever asked ourselves why we feel so tied to our phones, or for lack of better words, the life within them, or has social media become so deeply engrained in our worlds that we now fail to question a life without it? Perhaps, the answer lies behind the eye of the screen beholder. We wake up and begin watching people live, capture our lives to show the world that we are too, and forget that in the process of trying to appear put together and the seamless comparison we pose upon ourselves to a sea of usernames with identities, we are far too busy looking down to look up. And my, oh my, what we miss when we aren’t so engulfed in ourselves. Life is for living, not proving to other’s you are. For me, a proud and often hyper-critical perfectionist, social media can be an all too consuming place. It’s easy to slander a world of pretty pictures and perfectly curated lives until you realize that you’ve also been a part of the flock of cyber identities trying to curate a perfect world for themselves. So I began asking myself “why?”. When I began to think too much about capturing my personality in an organized cluster of photographs that myself, and so many others, have suddenly begun to associate with a somehow quantifiable self worth, or lack thereof. I began asking myself “why?” when I considered deleting a picture I liked because no one else liked it. I began asking myself “why?” when I started questioning my own worth as an individual based off a selfie that received 150 likes when other girls would get 500. I began asking myself “why?” when I felt the need to show the world that I’m good enough too. Because no one should ever feel like they’re not living their lives good enough if the life they’re living is authentically, humanly, livably, their own.

And in the process, I began feeling like posting less and living more. I began feeling like working in the garden and doing things I love more, because I wanted to, rather than feeling the need to find the perfect lighting to capture my evening to show that “I lived today”, or that I “did something today”. I began feeling less insignificant for working toward a life that isn’t immediately boast worthy instead of feeling like I MUST succeed in something to prove that i’m successful. The more I backed away, the more I wondered why I cared so much about what the acquaintances I seldom spoke to thought about me. Eventually, posting selfies began to feel like nailing a photograph to a telephone pole, waiting for someone to run toward the picture exclaiming “wow, amazing!”. It’s just a face. The more I posted, the more I felt anxious, uncomfortable, and guilty. This was often followed by a period of absence that filled my mind with a sense of inadequacy, as though life only existed on the ‘gram, and anything offline didn’t “count”. Life is for experiencing, and it began to feel like a waste when the experiences I enjoyed felt unquantifiable when I didn’t capture a picture to do them justice. As time went on, “just delete your Instagram” would toss back and forth across my subconscious throughout the day, followed by a lump of apprehension. Eventually, I did it. I clicked the red delete button. And poof, I was “gone”.

To be blunt, it felt like a momentary sense of relief followed by panic, and a deep sense of dread. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t immediately message Instagram asking them to undo the action, to no avail. Pathetic, I know. But slowly, the panic subsided. As two weeks passed, I felt a sense of freedom. From the self consumed hours spent trying to capture the right photo, from the sadness I’d feel when no one would “like” my heartfelt captions, art, or even face (how sad!), from the resentment I felt toward others who got likes without trying, and from the silent competition that seemed to commence between my peers. And I think the fact that holding back on social media somehow made me feel so much more “me” and so much more “alive”, is an important reminder to everyone that social media may feel like life, showcase fractions of our lives, be a fun artistic way to capture our lives, but does not represent you or your life and in itself is NOT life. The fact that social media can have such a grip on how I value my identity makes me fear deeply for the young individuals growing up in a generation where their peers have a deeper influence on how they see themselves than ever before. In an era where people can literally choose whether or not to “like your face”, a seemingly harmless application can have detrimental effects on one’s self esteem. Even my own, a twenty-one year old adult who has always, for the most part, been sure of herself. It’s all too easy to be consumed by the ideal that a grid of photos can showcase how admirable your life is. You are a living, breathing, human with memories and sights that even the best camera could never capture or comprehend.

Now I’m not saying “boycott social media, anarchy to cell phones!”. If you can use social media in a healthy and fun way, stick to it. But I am saying “think”. Think about why you’re posting. Think about why you feel the need to check your phone. Think about how social media makes you feel and why it makes you feel this way. Think about why it is that your mood dips when your like count does. Sometimes, I think about the idea of recreating an Instagram someday and why I feel the need to. But, I also think about how much more present I feel. Like how making eye contact with people feels easier. Like how I feel more present. Like how I’m focused on the real world instead of the cyber one. Like how I make each moment count and value in person communication more. Like how I get work done faster now, without distractions. Or how I remember to look around me more now: in the car, walking to class, in the store, with family. Or how when I’m walking, I feel myself planted deeper against the ground beneath my feet. So to you reading this, don’t forget to look up. It’s time we looked on the brighter side of life. There’s a great big sun, a great big smile, and a great big reason to keep going right in front of you waiting for you to see it — and it isn’t hidden behind your phone screen.