Goodbye, Instagram

'APPstinent' might be coming for you, too.

I deactivated Instagram last week because of Gabriela Nguyen. The Harvard graduate student founded an organization called APPstinent, which advocates for a social media-free lifestyle. I wasn’t familiar with Gabriela’s work until she wrote an article for After Babel, called “Gen Z, Social Media Is Optional.”

In it, she described spending her teenage years online, unable to focus, obsessed with how she looked, thinking about what everyone else was doing. She knew she had a problem and tried various tactics, from setting screen time limits to taking social media breaks to asking someone else to keep her phone while she did homework. But none of this stuck long-term.

That’s when she realized that trying to moderate platforms that are designed to hook us is a fool’s errand, especially when you stop and think that social media is optional to begin with. We don’t need to be doing this. Nguyen writes:

I’m aware I’m in the minority, especially for Gen Z, but I can’t rationalize “moderate use.” “Balanced use” of powerful temptations requires indefinite maintenance to keep our habits in check and imposes a steep tax. Humans are limited by our biology; technology, on the other hand, can improve infinitely. It seems unfair and unrealistic to expect that I’ll suddenly be able to conjure more willpower, wisdom, and time. I do not think that I am an outlier who just has bad self-control. In fact, I know I’m not.

She cites recent stats from Pew, showing that nearly half of teens (13-17) say they’re online “almost constantly.” Sixty-one percent of teens say they’ve tried to take breaks from social media, and more than one-third have tried to delete accounts permanently to reclaim their time and focus.

This compulsion is not fair to impose on a child. Nguyen writes, “I refuse to ‘hack my algorithm’ and ‘detox’ to justify the consumption of poison.” While social media can be useful in certain contexts, for those of us “drowning in rage bait and social comparison, it’s simply not worth it.”

The 5D Solution

She launched APPstinent to help anyone who’s feeling the same way and to offer a much-needed alternative perspective to social media’s role in our lives, that it is optional. No one needs to participate in these platforms, particularly if it has a negative effect. Yes, some trends and memes will be missed; it might be harder to get in touch with certain individuals; but the benefits of additional time, energy, and sanity far outweigh the costs.

Her 5D Method is Decrease, Deactivate, Delete, Downgrade, and Depart. She doesn’t suggest quitting cold turkey, but reducing time spent on apps by removing them from your smartphone, accessing them only on a browser, forcing yourself to use the password each time, and eventually deactivating, which will lead to automatic deletion after 30 days.

She recommends switching eventually to a dumb phone, carried in conjunction with a smartphone that’s turned off, in case of needing specific functions (like mobile banking or scanning a QR code), but even that is temporary. The ultimate goal is to extricate yourself from the digital world, to exist fully and wholly within the real world.

A Newfound Silence

I would not describe my relationship with social media as being like hers. I don’t post or interact much, and I never watch videos (I hate videos). But in recent months, I developed a tendency to open Instagram whenever I felt bored. I’d scroll through a few stories, then put it away. I had no trouble putting it down, but what I found is that the lives of others existed within my head to a degree that made me uncomfortable. I was too aware of what everyone else was doing (even though that’s the point of social media), and I didn’t like it.

I also started to resent the prolific posting habits of certain (dear, wonderful) friends, even though I was part of their audience. Whether right or wrong, I perceived their constant stories as sad/irritating bids for attention, and it made me like them less, which alarmed me. I figured it was better to stop viewing their online personas and focus instead on engaging with them offline.

It has only been 10 days or so without Instagram (and Facebook), but what I’ve noticed most is the blessed, beautiful silence. There is no steady drip-drip-drip of images and information about what my online friends are doing; I have no idea, in fact, what anyone is doing, unless I reach out directly. So, it’s just me, in my own life, filling each day to the best of my ability. And I love it.

I think it was Canadian writer Cory Doctorow who said, of social media, that there is a very thin line between “I hate this service, but I can’t bring myself to quit” and “I can’t believe it took me so long.” (I’m paraphrasing.) It is true. I didn’t intend to deactivate Instagram on the night that I did. I simply did it, after reading Nguyen’s article and looking at the APPstinent website. It made sense; it fit the moment.

Will it last? I don’t know. It feels good right now. I am in no rush to go back to colonizing my brain with images of other people’s meals, workouts, pets, or vacations, as interesting as they may be. I have my own life to contemplate, without comparison, performance, or distraction.

You Might Also Like:

• To Post or Not to Post

• Stop Filming, Start Dancing

• On Eccentricity

• Fix Your Analog Life First

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