Day 12
I've recently been on an Instagram hiatus due to the negative repercussions I feel from it, but I'm honestly thinking about it being inevitable. Well... or at least for a long while.
Instagram was such a nuance social media platform for me when I first got it at the ripe age of 13. My parents were very strict regarding my social media consumption, but my brother had it and he'd allowed for my dad to become more accustomed to the foreign app; therefore, it was simple for me to say "well, I already made an account and it's for 13+ year olds so it's okay, right?!"
I remember posting silly things for my few friends but always being so interested in who gave me a simple follow request. I think that was the thing for me, I took it all so seriously and genuinely thought in my mind, "you want to follow me because you must care about my life!" Of course, everyone views social media differently but at a young age, it can really begin to define your status and existence.
I have to say, though, I really never took it "that" seriously. It was more interesting to me when a random person who I'd never spoken to before but knew of tried to follow me because in my mind, there always had to be a reason for everything.
As time went on, I ended up leaving the school I'd gone to since childhood and I didn't care to be connected to really anyone anymore. So, I made my account completely identity-less. However, within those couple years, I had also created a smaller, more personable account and I began posting on there frequently. This was after my disconnection from almost everyone I used to know, and most of what I posted was meant to display my life in a mysterious, aesthetic way. So even then, it was not quite what my life truly was. It was meant to look appealing and interesting.
During this time of disconnect, I changed a lot as a person and lost myself completely in vain attempts to be someone I thought would be more interesting for others. I remember one of my very few friends I still seldomly interacted with, asked me to go to prom with her and I immediately dismissed the idea because of fear of perception, but then a new thought came to me. I should go and show everyone the "new" person I am. I just realize now that everything was done in such a vain attempt for acceptance. At the end of the day, I didn't even actually accept myself.
And now, I have a life so wonderful I genuinely couldn't ask for anything more, yet I find myself comparing to others more than I ever have before. For the past year, I would constantly go through phases of deleting and redownloading the app. I still had two accounts: one that was smaller to post on, and one that I essentially just "kept up" with people on. I finally made the decision to disable the latter, and then a couple months later, I made the decision to delete the app and have enough self-discipline to not check up on it on the browser.
This has been such a good experience for me, so far, because at this point (a couple weeks later) I have no more urges to even check it. It feels very freeing. I'm not constantly taking photos thinking of the next best post I can make, who will like it, what posts others have made that are better, how other people are living their lives. And, especially, keeping up on people who I don't know and really never knew or sometimes even liked! It baffles me how invested I could become in people I never even knew or cared to know.
I think our brains as humans are wired to be comparative due to our survival instinct, because if we notice and acknowledge that someone is living a "better" life than us, we can make the effort to "change." BUT, when that gets into comparing delusion with your very real life, it can get to be a slippery slope. We aren't just going around anymore looking at the way one farmer grew their crop to be so healthy and big, and assimilating our own style of crop growing to theirs for better results. It's comparing someone's minor amount they're choosing to display to your entire life. And I've realized what a dangerous road that is to go down.
So ultimately, I really don't know if I'll ever go back to actively having my account. As much as I enjoyed making my pretty picture collages, I might have to find a new way to do that where I'm not being exposed to such negativity.
THIS is choosing peace, truly.