Why I haven't used Instagram in 5 years

It's 2020. I'm 23, scrolling Instagram on a Sunday evening. Someone's on a yacht. Someone closed a round. Someone has perfect abs in Bali. I close the app and feel worse than five minutes ago. My body isn't that. My career isn't there. At 23 somebody already made an exit, and I'm sitting in a rented apartment not understanding what I'm doing with my life.

I thought I was a loser. Not confident enough, not strong enough, not successful enough. Normal people look at the pictures and feel happy for everyone. For some reason I didn't.

Then, in grad school, I stumbled onto an MIT Sloan study.

TL;DR: access to Facebook raised the share of severe depression by 7% and of anxiety disorder by 20%. The effect is comparable to 20% of the impact of losing your job. And the key part: the longer someone used the platform, the stronger the damage. Seniors suffered more than freshmen. And then it hit me:

I'm not a loser. I'm using a product that works exactly as designed. Its goal isn't my well-being, it's my engagement. The worse I feel, the more I scroll, hunting for something to lift my mood. The more I scroll, the more ads I see. My discomfort eqals their revenue.

I deleted the app. It felt weird at first: the need to see what's happening with friends didn't go anywhere. Then that fell away too. Turns out, if you want to know how your friends are doing, you can just call them.

Five years without Instagram. My body is the same. Still no exit. But I no longer feel worse every Sunday.

Stay tuned ❤️❤️❤️