I deleted the Instagram app on a (sort of) whim
Reflections on a month without social media on my phone
A wee table of contents:
Part One: Realizing I was unhappy
Part Two: Experimenting with social media breaks
Part Three: A life-changing whim
Part Four: One month free from social media
Part One: Realizing I was unhappy
My disillusionment with social media has been hanging around for several years now. I’m just now realizing it started with the social media burnout I felt after I put hours and hours of effort into building somewhat of a following so I could put on an exciting and immersive book launch for the publication of my first book in 2021. I spent much of 2021 taking photos of myself and my book, creating graphics on Canva, writing captions, planning my content calendar, engaging with other accounts and followers, showing up daily on Stories, etc… If you’ve ever tried to go 100% in on social media marketing, you know the feeling.
And while I had some success with my launch period online, I was so tired afterwards. So tired, in fact, that I never really recovered. I half-heartedly tried to get back into a regular posting schedule after taking a “break,” which quickly dwindled to me just posting whenever I felt like it, which wasn’t often.
The other “oh, shoot” moment I had with social media was the realization that I had frittered away an hour just watching the Reels feed. That was a bit of a devastating realization.
And up out of the rabbit hole I started to climb.
I started exploring how I could use less tech in my every day life. Every year since 2022 (if not longer), I’ve had a yearly goal that had something to do with spending less time on social media. I read Stolen Focus by Johann Hari and had my eyes opened to the damage social media (and other facets of technology) are having on our brains. I started listening to podcasts on parenting in the age of social media and how technology is affecting the way we live.
And on a more personal level, I was noticing how often I left my stints on Instagram feeling either riled up or desperately hopeless. A place that was supposedly meant to bring me joy brought me political upheaval, bitchy comment sections, and just a whole lot of conflict. It was like watching trashy reality TV 24/7. (Sometimes you gotta watch trashy reality TV, but the show ends after a hour and you move on with your life!)
Between learning about how I’m the product on social media, and figuring out that my current use of social media wasn’t making me happy, I started thinking about how my phone had been eating up so much of my time since 2012.
Ouch. My smartphone has been stealing my attention and my finite time for over a decade.
I couldn’t continue this way. I didn’t want to look up and realizing I had lost an hour to short (but often funny) videos ever again. I didn’t want my emotional state to be so easily thrown into one of anxiety or anger. I didn’t want to use my phone for procrastination anymore.
Something had to change.
Part Two: Experimenting with social media breaks
As I mentioned a little earlier, I’ve been playing with various iterations of “use less social media” goals for several years. Nothing really stuck until Christmas 2023.
The week between Christmas and New Year’s is my favourite time of the year. It’s a magical week where time doesn’t quite make sense, mornings and afternoons blend together until the waning daylight reminds you evening is coming, chocolate is for breakfast and eggs are for supper, and besides any leftover holiday meals with family, the pace is much slower. I love how topsy-turvy, but intuitive this time is.
In order to lean into this quiet week, I decided in 2023 to totally disregard my Instagram and Facebook accounts and just be present in my life. While there were a couple times I accidentally/automatically went online (um, how scary is that!), it was a great week.
One week free from social media and I realized that my mind felt clearer and calmer. From one week.
As an indie author, I still felt I needed to maintain somewhat of a regular presence on Instagram, so for my 2024 goal, I decided to visit social media just once a day. That went well for a month or so, and then I was back to my old ways. It was tough when I was trapped in a dark room trying to get my one-year-old to sleep for several hours a day — what else was I supposed to do?? (This is a period I started making good use of my e-reader.)
But, as I stated in part one of this post, I knew I didn’t like how much time I spent on social media, and I knew I didn’t like how it made me feel.
Magical-week-between-Christmas-and-New-Year’s 2024, I took another week off from social media. It was glorious. My 2025 yearly goal was to visit social media for a maximum of 30 minutes per day; I set the timer and everything. But I gave birth to my second child, turned off my timers since I knew I would be nursing or nap-trapped a lot more, and that goal fell by the wayside.
But that glorious week of no social media, and those few months of solid moderation were so lovely. I was less angry with the world, my time was a little more my own, and I felt like I was in control of my phone use.
I was getting better, closer to how I wanted my life to look in terms of social media usage. I was climbing out of the rabbit hole, and I could see daylight off in the distance.
Part Three: A life-changing whim
If you’re a parent, you may have experienced the onslaught on advice that lives on social media: Here’s how to sleep-train. Sleeping training is cruel. Child-fed weaning. Don’t feed your baby these foods! These are toys doctors will never give their kids. Child-safe sunscreen. You shouldn’t be afraid of the sun.
Within the first few months of my first-born’s life, I realized every time I visited Instagram and saw all the ways I was screwing up her nap schedule, I knew I had to unfollow those accounts and make a point not to engage with content like that.
The barrage of conflicting advice had me asking my parents how they learned about all these aspects of parenting for us kids.
“We read the manual.”
“We went to the website or made a phone call to someone who would actually know.”
“We didn’t listen to random strangers on the internet.”
And as I read between the lines of their answers, I heard a loud resounding, “Duh.”
Don’t listen to random strangers on the internet.
The following morning, I was sitting at my kitchen island, probably checking my email, probably drinking a chai or Earl Grey latte (I’ve been on a bit of a kick lately).
Don’t listen to random strangers on the internet.
For years, I had been trying to curb my phone use. For months, I had recognized that I felt better when I used virtually no social media. I reveled in those weeks I had disappeared from those apps. Those spaces were just becoming more and more confrontational, rude, and just generally unhappy, and as a result, I was becoming more angry, stressed, and just generally unhappy.
Don’t listen to random strangers on the internet.
Okay.
With very little pomp and circumstance, I picked up my phone and deleted the Instagram and Facebook apps.
I’m out of the rabbit hole, blinking at the sunlight.
Part Four: One month free from social media
My word of the year is ‘alignment.’
I want each decision I make and each action I take to align with my values, priorities, and goals. Deleting a couple time-sucking, energy-hurting apps from my phone has turned out to be one of the most aligned things I’ve done.
I am aimlessly scrolling far less, which means I’m spending more time doing things that actually make a difference in my life. The only thing causing me to regularly shake my head and perhaps get a little angry is the news app on my phone, but I don’t endlessly doom scroll there or obsessively check it over and over every day.
If I had deleted these social media apps two years ago before I had done all these experimental breaks, I’m not sure I would have been as successful. Deleting an app cold-turkey certainly would have never crossed my mind, but if it did, it would have felt extremely daunting and perhaps unattainable.
After a two year journey of seriously experimenting with adjusting how I interact with my phone, however, deleting the apps was just the next right thing. It was easy. It was no big deal. It was just something I decided to do on a whim while drinking my morning tea.
And I don’t miss those apps. In fact, there have been periods of a few days when I realize I haven’t checked them on my laptop. Some of my scrolling while sitting in a dark room with my baby has been replaced by Substack (both short and long-form content). But when I’m standing in my kitchen wondering what task to tackle next, I don’t waste time dithering on Instagram anymore.
It has been a little inconvenient a couple times. For example, placing an ad on Facebook Marketplace is far easier when you can simply upload pictures straight from your phone to the app. But there are work-arounds, and it’s worth it to be inconvenienced from time to time. The desktop version of the apps are clunky, which is to be expected. Again, that’s fine for how little I intend to use them.
I do wonder a little bit how I’ll handle social media when I have book sale events this summer; advertizing for events like that still occurs primarily on social media and that’s not changing anytime soon.
For now, however, I have zero regrets about deleting Instagram and Facebook from my phone. My time is mine again, my brain is a little clearer, my creativity is stronger, and I’m just generally happier.
I’m happy to stay out of the rabbit hole.