Babe, just delete your Instagram already

Ranting from ya gal on why you need to get the fuck off Instagram

It’s July 2019. And I’m in a bad mood. 

Why am I in a bad mood?

Because I just noticed that some girl I used to work with, who I was never very good friends with and who I found pretty annoying to be honest, has apparently deleted me from Instagram. She’s got a private profile and I can no longer see it. I’ve been unfriended. Officially removed from viewing the highlighted showreel of her life.

And instead of seeing this for what it was—absolutely fucking nothing; an event with no impact whatsoever on my life; an arbitrary action—I spiralled. What had I done!? What had someone said!? Why me??!! Am I awful!!? I hadn’t said a word to this girl in over two years and yet I spent the best part of two hours anxiously wondering what the fuck I’d done to deserve the Insta-chop. 

Reader, that meant I had spent more time worrying about why she’d deleted me than I’d ever spent actually talking to her in the first place.

I went back through my own feed. Zooming in and out. Checking captions. Nothing particularly damning or offensive? Mainly quotes on a millennial pink background and photos from a recent holiday? Pretty innocuous stuff, no? So why the unceremonious removal?! WHAT WAS THE PROBLEM!?

And it was at this very moment, on that disgustingly warm day in July, as I panicked about what some random ass gal from a previous life may or may not think of me, that I realised how toxic my relationship with Instagram had become.

And so.

I deleted it (and, yes, looking back I’m surprised—no, impressed—at quite how cold turkey I went from the get go). 

Now, let me ask you something: Do you think it’s normal to know what someone you went on holiday with in 2013 had for breakfast? Does it make your day any better knowing the guy you snogged in year 7—who you haven’t seen in 15 years—just got engaged? Do you think it’s healthy to know that your old coworker’s cat is having surgery next Tuesday? Or keep up with hundreds of people’s daily lives that you do not know and will never meet through tiny squares on your phone screen?

No. It. Is. Not.

And I cannot—CANNOT!!!—believe how normalised to this absolute obscenity our society has become.

If you take even a brief second to step back and think about what you’re really consuming and how much information your brain is processing on a minute-by-minute basis about pretty much every single person you’ve ever known or seen on telly, you would see it for what is was: Absolutely fucking ridiculous. Ludicrous. Insane. FOMO and comparison and fantasy and envy served right into your palm whenever you want it. Like your very own shitty little anxiety tablet you can pop 15 times a day.

What a fucking treat. 

Now, I had spent years reading about the negative effects of social media and had always maintained that, while admittedly shitty in so many ways, it just didn’t affect me too much. I knew the dangers, the pitfalls, the glossed up fakeness. I knew it wasn’t real. I also grew up in the era of Bebo, MySpace, and uploading 348 photos to Facebook albums entitled serial killers ‘n’ sunsets and thought I was old enough and wise enough to not only know better but also to glide, untouched, right over the alarming amount of research into the impact of social media in recent years. I was in my late 20s, well past the painfully impressionable, angst-ridden teenage years. I was totally fine… right???

The truth is I had no idea how much it was ruining my life until I was no longer on it.

For example, about two weeks after I deleted Instagram, I went on holiday with my husband and some couple friends. And something hit me. Up until this point—and without ever even noticing it—I realised that every holiday I’d ever been on as an adult had been subtly underpinned by a subconscious effort to get The Snap.

I know you know exactly what I mean. 

From packing outfits I knew would pop on The Feed to applying a full face of makeup before heading into a dodgy dive bar in town; so much of the holiday experience was spent actively showing everyone else I was on holiday. It was all performative bullshit. Finding good spots for photos; making sure I looked my best for those candid beach snaps; arranging the wine and plates on the table to be aesthetically pleasing before actually eating anything. Because if you don’t post it to Instagram, were you ever really in Portugal? If your followers didn’t see it, did you really drink that spicy margarita in front of the sunset? If you don’t share photos of your cute little body in a bikini, how will anyone know you’re still in (relative) shape?!

But when you don’t have Instagram, this whole facade disappears. One night, I went into town without any makeup on—no make up! On a night out!—simply because I couldn’t be arsed. I knew no one was going to see my fresh-out-the-shower face online later. Do you have any idea how freeing that is?! No pressure to look a certain way or stage anything for the perfect post; just me, out and about, looking fresh-faced and naked without a self conscious care in the world. It was like drinking gold. I got high off my own supply. The entire holiday was a moment. I’m embarrassed to admit how fucking amazing it felt. Or how much the tiny act of deleting Instagram had unarguably and dramatically improved my life.

And so I started telling absolutely everyone about how much better life was Instagram-free. I practically begged my friends to delete theirs and discover how much calmer and carefree they felt. I became an anti-Instagram campaigner of the highest degree. 

And don’t worry, I still have about a million photos from that holiday (most of which feature me looking objectively hideous but happy) clogging up my phone storage. The memories are all there, baby, I just don’t need to broadcast them to people I haven’t seen since primary school. These people do not need to see my holiday snaps, and I do not need to worry about looking good in them. I don’t need anyone’s validation that I had a fucking great holiday other than my own. Amen.

Almost five years on, I’ll admit there’s a certain smugness about living off the grid. I feel a small sense of superiority when someone tries to tag me in an Insta story and I casually reply that I don’t have it—an admission that typically elicits one of three responses:

1. A confused stare like I’ve just said I don’t believe in coffee

2. "Wow, good for you. I wish I could delete mine!” 

3. "But how do you keep up with people!!?”

And so: To everyone who makes declarations of wishing to delete theirs, too: Guess what? You can. You can literally delete it right now. Today. This second. The power is in your hands. No wishing or genie needed. Just try it. 

And for those wondering how I keep up with people, I’ll let you in on a surprising upside of my Instagram-free existence. It’s actually made my friendships stronger. Sure, there have been moments when I thought everyone had been hanging out without me, only to realise they’d just seen each other’s Instagram stories. But when you're not constantly updated on your friends' every move via daily pictures, do you know what you do instead? You end up *actually* asking them, instead of assuming you already know everything based on a perfectly curated photo dump. It’s quite refreshing.

And let me tell you: I still LOVE seeing photos from my friends' lives—this is something that will never change. But now, instead of scrolling through their perfectly curated, edited, and obsessively filtered shots on Insta, I get a front row seat to behind the scenes on WhatsApp. I see them as they really are; the ugly selfies, the double chins, the dirty nappies, the messy houses. The stuff that doesn’t make it to the feed. The real reasons why I call these little mingers my most cherished friends. And it is SO MUCH MORE ENJOYABLE. Instagram, at the very least, is fucking boring in comparison.

Lastly, to everyone reading this article I urge you to politely accept that you don’t understand the impact that daily Instagram scrolling is having on you. I know because I was you. I thought I was untouchable. I thought Instagram was fine. And so, from experience, I promise that you are not immune—you may think you are, but delete it for six months and see how much better you feel. Just try it. Please.

Now, when I think back to that girl I used to work with, all I can say is GOOD 👏 FOR 👏 YOU 👏. You’d reached a level of follower culling and highlight-reel pruning that I just wasn’t ready for back then. You got there first, trimming out the people you barely knew from your feed. Bravo. And then I one-upped you—I deleted the whole thing. Maybe you should give that a try? 

So thank you, random girl I used to work with. Thank you for being the unlikely plot twist I didn’t know I needed because deleting Instagram was one of the best decisions I ever made for my mental health; the smallest, easiest action that had the biggest, longest-lasting impact on my happiness. Sincerely, fuck Instagram.

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