Edited by Aashi Galriya
After my first semester of university, I made the scary decision to deactivate my Instagram account for a temporary period of time. Initially, it was an anxious couple of weeks without social media, but strangely enough, after a month, things started to look better again. The pace of life was slower, and I no longer felt the urge to keep up with people or check their Instagram stories on a daily basis.
There are quite a few things that I realized once I had gotten rid of my social media account. The lives of people on the internet are not always how they seem to be. Looking back, I remember seeing the pictures that my friends used to upload on their Instagram accounts and feeling terribly left out. It felt as if I was the only person who did not have a fun and outgoing side to my university life. I recall checking my phone every five minutes to see if there was a new story that had popped up on my app and whether my friends were up to something new and exciting. The feeling of missing out or being left alone was borderline terrifying. Everyone’s life felt so picture perfect on their social media profiles, but in reality the same people would tell me that they were suffering from anxiety, loneliness,and feeling like they did not fit in with the rest of their friend-group. This was utterly confusing to me, the fact that people were going through a rough period in their lives but pretending to be happy and cheerful on their Instagram stories. Why was there a need to keep up this pretense of faking happiness online?Â
I had an interesting conversation with a friend in my first semester of university when Instagram was an effective medium to connect with your fellow batchmates and initiate conversation with people you had never met before. Those days for me were the epitome of a social media frenzy,—I vividly recall sending friend requests to anyone and everyone who was in my batch with great enthusiasm. I had always had this narrative in my mind that people were exactly who they portray themselves to be on their accounts online, but little did I know that this was not always the case. Sure, people were sweet when they texted online, but in real life, the same people seemed to be aloof and did not always care about their friends. There was a period of time when I used to be active on Instagram and I only cared about the number of followers I had. Now that I think about it, it was an absurd obsession that I honed over the couple of years owing to my excessive use of social media and desire to know everything about the people that I had met in college. And so, while having the conversation with this person, at first I could not even remember her name until she said she had seen my profile online and sent me a request that I had blindly accepted without even knowing who she was. It is quite ironic how I had just accepted a “friend request” without even knowing the name of the person who had sent me the request. Yes, I had done that to increase the number of followers that I had, but for what reason? I wasn’t really sure but I guess it did give me a weird sense of ego boost to know so many people online but have not genuine relationships with the same people in real life.Â
My obsession with social media was slowly getting out of hand to the point where I would wake up feeling groggy with bloodshot eyes and go straight back to scrolling reels on Instagram. It was like my day used to start with me looking at pictures of my friends partying on a random Thursday night and end with me looking at other people doing pretty much the same thing. Doing this every single day drained my energy severely. It felt like a routine that was coupled with monotony and boredom and yet I could not help but scroll through. Another picture, another reel and then, that was the end, except it really wasn’t. Social media started feeling stupid and unrelatable (despite the relatable brain rot content and memes). Watching other people feel content and thrive in their social life just made me feel worse about myself and all the things that I was missing out on and keeping up with these people online was the only thing that made me feel like I belonged in some way or the other. If I stopped liking and commenting on their posts they would do the same to me; if I did not know what my friends were up to, there is no way I could keep up with the latest stories, and that would make me a really boring person. Thoughts like this wandered my mind every time I felt like getting off of social media. What would I do with all the time on my hands after deleting social media? How would I keep up with 500 people and who would I text every time? Except I did make that decision in the end.Â
Coming to the present situation, it has been two years since I deleted my Instagram account and the only way I get to know about events happening at my university is through event emails and my few friends who text me on Whatsapp. It has been a weird transition because I am now at a point in life when I don’t even remember that I had a social media account (this is what happens when Youtube shorts take over the reels haha!). Initially, quitting was undeniably hard because as someone who was chronically online and had friends and acquaintances who were also chronically online, I felt extremely isolated and lonely because my friend circle significantly decreased in size and soon the people who had only spoken to me online had already forgotten that I existed, except for those who actually knew and cared about me. This reality check brought me close to people who were undoubtedly my true friends and have stuck with me till date. Deleting social media has felt like a relief and now I feel more in tune with myself and have all the time in the world to focus on things that matter to me!Â