I don’t think that anyone in our generation understands just how tight of a hold social media has on our brains until that grip is no longer there.
Early on this past summer, that tight hold that Instagram had on me started to feel suffocating. I found myself constantly checking the app during all of my free time. Any time that a conversation lulled, it was opened subconsciously before I had even realized I was doing it. First thing in the morning, I would doomscroll endlessly on Instagram reels before I had even sat up in bed. And the constant exposure to the lives of others was exhausting. Every second of scrolling on Instagram felt like a contest for me; a contest of perfect, aesthetic photo dumps, and I was completely drained.
Around June, I decided to ditch all of it. It started out as a temporary decision, a short break. I knew I needed a cleanse from the endless comparison, and my brain desperately needed to be detached from the internet for a while. It’s been four months now, and honestly, I still don’t see a reason to go back.
In the beginning, I definitely felt the app’s absence. How strange it is to think that such an inconsequential thing would feel like such a loss? I could no longer see what my friends were posting or where they were going on vacation that month. I could no longer swipe up on their stories or comment on their posts.
But what I didn’t notice at first, was that my brain was no longer overloaded by constant information, by constant comparison to others. Just from a short break from social media, I felt my mind gradually start to slow down and rest.
I genuinely believe that deleting Instagram helped me learn to be kinder to myself, and it helped me stop comparing myself to others online. For me, a lot of social media feels like a performance, and that performance becomes tiring after a while. It feels more peaceful to keep the app out of my mind and to spend just a little less time looking at a screen.
I recently had a conversation about my social media dilemma with a coworker, and we talked about how screen time and the constant information overload online has depleted our social skills and exhausted our attention spans. We wondered if social media has made us more superficial because of the performance that it encourages.
Don’t get me wrong, I definitely think that Instagram can be fun. I love taking photos with my friends and arranging them into a little photo dump with a cute caption. I don’t think that the answer to this problem is quitting all social media cold turkey. But I do believe that taking even just a short break can be really helpful, even if it’s just temporary. You might be surprised how much you need to cleanse your brain and be detached from the online world for a little while.