You’re alone in your room, but with a tap on the familiar galaxy icon you open the door into a wonderland, filled with beautiful people enjoying good food, parties, workouts and having the time of their lives. From the deafening silence of boredom, you can instantaneously immerse yourself in the best days of someone else’s best life. Warning: it may not be as easy to get out. Common side effects may include: feelings of panic, shame, guilt, regret, jealousy, self-loathing, inadequacy, disorientation (upon realising two hours have gone by), and sheer exhaustion with it all.
Someone once joked on an Instagram story: “coming on Instagram again to worsen my self esteem”, and I nearly wept from how much I related to it. We know for a fact that social media is destroying our mental health. In 2017, the Royal Society for Public Health (RSPH) conducted a survey of almost 1,500 young people aged 14-24 from across the UK. Instagram, compared to YouTube, Snapchat, Facebook, and Twitter, was ranked as the worst app for mental health and wellbeing-related issues such as loneliness, depression, and emotional support. It’s no wonder that Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple, doesn’t allow his nephew on social networking sites.
The Bad
“On the face of it, Instagram can look very friendly”, says RSPH’s Niamh McDade. “But that endless scrolling without much interaction doesn’t really lead to much of a positive impact on mental health and wellbeing”. He points out that we don’t really have control over what we’re seeing, and quite often, we see images that claim to be showing us reality, yet aren’t. This, he thinks, is especially damaging to young people. Consider the lack of control over what we see on our Instagram feed as compared to YouTube, where we choose the videos we watch.
McDade thinks the problem with Instagram is that we almost exclusively share content that is meant to reflect positively on ourselves. On Twitter or Facebook, we see much more content that isn’t saying “Hey, look at my great life”. The desire for likes and comments feeds our narcissism and craving for social validation. As I grow older, I don’t really get the urge to post anymore. Instead, I’ve become the silent user who just views everyone’s stories.
For a social networking site, Instagram does not involve very much social interaction. Users who are not posting are usually busy scrolling and refreshing. The interaction is mostly between us and whoever we’re hanging out with, with the public dimension thrown in for fun. For instance, we might poll followers or make fun of our friends, publicly “shaming” them for being late for a meet-up.
The Ugly
It is easy to forget that Instagram is designed to be addictive. Most of the time it seems harmless enough, because the content I’m mostly viewing is what’s posted by my friends and acquaintances. It’s not like everything I see is curated to say “look at my great life”, or is even particularly interesting. I’ve actually reached for the app when I couldn’t sleep at night, thinking that the mundanity of Instagram stories might relieve my possibly caffeine-fuelled overthinking. Bikini babes, gym rats and new-Porsche owners aside, there is plenty of boredom, annoyance, angst, and tiredness on my feed. At times it does seem like I’m being presented with reality, and I can often relate to someone else’s angst about inconsiderate group project members or running late for a test. But my guess is that people wouldn’t readily broadcast their lowest points, their deepest fears and insecurities to their 1,309 followers. The content is skewed towards positive portrayals of ourselves, and thus inaccurate representations of reality.
According to app developer Peter Mezyk, the success of an app is often measured by the extent to which it introduces a new habit. He shares that app developers adopt a standard approach based on the Fogg Behavior model, which states three criteria required to form a habit: sufficient motivation, an action, and a trigger. The lower the hurdle to usage, the better. For instance, Instagram has a “pull-to-refresh” feature and no natural stops which would prompt the scrolling user to move on to something else. This trick is borrowed from casino slot machines, widely considered to be one of the most addictive machines ever invented. Not only is the action of refreshing similar to pulling the lever on a slot machine, but it also takes advantage of our attraction to the unpredictability of gambling for a ‘reward’. The point is to keep us on the app as long as possible so that they can push more ads to us, generating more profit for them. In 2019 alone, Instagram brought in about $20 billion in advertising revenue. With nearly 1 billion active users today, the platform is the new “social commerce powerhouse”, as Cowen senior research analyst John Blackledge calls it.
A quick Google search on social media addiction was all it took for me to realise that Instagram addiction is what I’ve been struggling with for years, since creating my account in 2012. Psychologist Mark D. Griffiths’s study on addiction in the Journal of Substance Use, described six core components to define any behavioural addiction: salience, mood modification, tolerance, withdrawal, conflict, and relapse. Going on Instagram was a compulsive behaviour for me. I was re-downloading the app, which I have deleted by default, too many times a day. When I got bored of the stories and posts of the nearly 900 people I followed, I would (carefully) check out random people’s profiles. Especially when I was stressed. Nearing major deadlines, I’d find myself instinctively reaching for the app, by reflex, as an instant escape from my responsibilities. Procrastinating on Instagram came to be a real problem, affecting my productivity and performance in school. Hello self-sabotage my old friend. When I lost a critical sense of control over my actions, it felt like everything was falling apart.
More importantly, my research which includes movies like The Social Dilemma, led me to the realisation that I’m not alone in this struggle — it’s a worldwide phenomenon. But as much as we can blame tech companies, in the end, we obviously have to take responsibility for our actions. I felt like I needed to actually quit, rather than stay in the hands of corporations which are looking to profit off my addiction, and by extension my insecurities and loneliness.
So why are all the red flags in this toxic, nine-year relationship with Instagram not enough for me to decisively quit, forever?
The Good
I can’t quit. I’ve deleted, temporarily disabled and even permanently deactivated my account, but found it impossible to stay off completely, because there are actually genuine, not-unhealthy reasons that make me want to stay.
I want to keep up with my friends’ lives without the pressure of initiating or replying to personal messages. That way I can keep in touch with my old friends and those I’ve drifted from by occasionally responding to their stories when I’m in the mood; Instagram opens up new social possibilities. I’ve tried texting friends instead, but it’s just not the same. Maybe I sound like a flake, but isn’t it possible that we’ve all changed with the social media revolution and are finding new ways to connect? I personally love that space of low-commitment socialising, the close friends lists, private accounts, and just being able to explore the space without getting interrupted by prompts to sign in/create an account. In this day and age we’re told that it’s important to form “weak ties”, so maybe Instagram accounts are even essential for networking purposes. And what about those of us looking at a job in social media marketing?
At its best, Instagram can be pretty wholesome. Cool stuff is happening, something for tribes of every stripe, from fashion inspiration and acrobatics to comics and memes. Often I’m admiring qualities in people. “She looks so cool. She’s amazing. She’s doing so many things, with a YouTube channel and freelance design and photography”.
But as I’m admiring, my mind is also whispering: “… and she’s so different from me”. The unwholesomeness lies with me. Maybe the problem is that I don’t have a strong enough sense of what I’m good at. I have interests that I haven’t pursued to the point of expertise: writing, dancing, singing. So I really admire people who do take it further, making something of their talents (read: have talents). The admiration quickly turns into feelings of crippling inadequacy, wishing I could be these people. This is the other side of the coin of admiration which is very much intertwined with insecurity.
Would I say it’s worth it? As you can probably guess, hell no, not even close. Considering the damage done, the hours and days wasted on bad thoughts and unnecessary pain, I’m better off without an online trace.
Which means what — cold turkey?
My take
Nine years of struggle later, I won’t pretend that I’m over it. I still have problems with it, and I still haven’t made up my mind about it, whether to keep trying for good old moderation, or to just get out of the online space, once and for all. There are times when I think I won’t miss out on much. While the occasional chat and knowing what my friends are getting up to are nice, I could also just text people.
For now, I hope to leave the addiction, but not Instagram, in my past. I don’t want the app to have a death-like grip over me, but I do still want an account. The onus is on me to know my weaknesses, and curb bad habits.
Of course, even as I slowly get the hang of moderation, time on Instagram is not always filled with wholesomeness, good vibes, and inspiration. From time to time, I lapse back into self-doubt, comparing and despairing. I’m learning to go on Instagram when I’m in an okay headspace, not when I know I really shouldn’t be on it. I’m also learning, as hard as it is, to never confuse what I see online with real people and real life.