The Death of Instagram is Setting Me Free

The future is brighter without social media

I wrote the first iteration of this piece back in 2022. At the time, Instagram still felt like a platform I had to be on in order to promote my creative work. I had long lost interest in having a personal account, but there was still just about enough value in the platform that it felt worth keeping my professional account active. If you’ve followed me for long enough, you’ll know that social media is something with which I have always struggled to have a healthy relationship. But if you’re new, let me bore you with the long, tedious story of my internet addiction, liberation, re-addiction - and re-liberation?!

It all began in 2018, when I deleted all three of my social media accounts. Not just the apps, and not just deactivation. I downloaded all my data, then permanently deleted my Facebook, then Twitter, and finally Instagram. I had listened to people like Jaron Lanier and Cal Newport, and as a millennial I could still remember what it was like to live without this kind of addictive technology. We didn’t have internet until I was in my late teens, and even with MySpace and MSN, the intensity of use was nothing compared to what the internet has since become for young people. By 2018, ten years after I got my first iPhone, I knew that I was addicted to social media. And I bloody hated it.