I’ve been feeling a lot when I’m scrolling the algorithm feed on Instagram. In the span of one doom scrolling hour I feel like a maniac, not even clowns should be subjected to so many emotions at once. Are you familiar with the phrase: “Crying for strangers is my passion”. Well for me it’s not just crying. The constant exposure to bad news from which there are plenty to choose from are having an effect on me. Choose from the latest war, an ongoing genocide, late stage capitalism and a collapsing ecosystem. I am aware of all the issues, I do what I can in my limited power, I donate, I feel, I care. But the algorithm doesn’t deliver hope, only despair.
So how do I break up with Instagram? I’m still going to see it around, after all it is always in my friend’s pockets. It is invited to every social interaction, celebration and life milestone for the majority of people. So, do I outcast myself? Do I leave everyone behind? It’s not realistic to think I can stop interacting with it.
Like when you have a toxic friend you cannot stop interacting with because they are part of the group dynamic. I will lower my exposure to Instagram. Similar to what happened to Twitter when it changed to X, people quickly looked for an App to replace it. I want to look for alternatives, even if they are empty at the moment, hoping for the big migration to happen. I already tried the time limit in an attempt to reclaim some for myself. I was trying to use any tool available to fight Aza’s infinite scroll¹.
In danger of sounding older than I am, I do want to express how I miss the days when being online was a physical choice we made. Sitting in front of our shared home computer, while doing research for homework, to log into Messenger and see all my friends also connected. To mark myself as “offline” and “online” two, three, and sometimes four times for good measure to signal to my crush at the time: I am online, talk to me!
I had been reviewing my screen time for months, always trying to make it shorter. My time limit for instagram has been 45 minutes a day for more than a year now, it helped, but not always. I still found myself pressing the “Remind me in 15 minutes” button two, three and sometimes four times because it cut the video mid sentence. Some weeks were great and others not so much. I wanted to do other things with my time but the power of the infinite scroll and the next suggested reel had me wasting precious hours.
A couple of weeks ago I decided to log into instagram using my computer. What I found surprised me a little bit. On the computer the miniature reel previews don’t exist, so one less tempting interaction. I saw fewer or no ads. I saw few suggested posts. But overall I saw my friends! Post after post of people I actually followed with photos posted weeks ago I hadn’t seen. It felt very 2010 and I thought what if I only use it on the computer? when I’m sitting down like it was with MSN. My theory for two different experiences on mobile and PC is that Ads are probably targeted more to the phones.
I opened my phone and deleted the instagram app.
Alas, I didn’t feel anything empowering. I went back to my day, it was a Thursday I was very busy and the weekend tornado caught me. Monday arrived and I didn’t even notice I didn’t use instagram for 3 days. Was it really that easy? On the weekends I’m hardly on my computer so I never thought to just go to it for the sole purpose of checking it. I felt like I was discovering something.
It seemed like I was cured of the infinite scroll. Seemed. Because I have a tablet and it has instagram installed of course. So I thought well I don’t really take the tablet when I leave the house. So it might be okay to use it to check it once or twice during the day. Right? Go in, answer some DMs and go out, easy. But on slower days when there isn’t much to do I get sucked by the scroll for 20 minutes and I cringe at my own weakness when I realize how easy is to fall back to bad habits.
I feel like I won a battle but the war is still going. How are you limiting your social media?
MERIKKUMA 
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