I deleted Instagram for 3 months and this is what happened

If you are here to read about how deleting Instagram woke up my spirit and how I have grown to be bigger than this mechanism which was made to suck the soul out of your body, then you came to the wrong place.

I deleted Instagram in November 2021 and re-downloaded it today on March 5th, 2022. Why did I delete it? I think I secretly had the expectation that deleting instagram would make me a better person. I constantly hear boomers and other people who think they are smarter than my generation complain that social media is slowly destroying the youth and how we will probably rely so heavily on our iPhones that one day we will die from the blue light burning our eyes off. I wanted to see if they were right. I also could feel myself relying on my Instagram for comfort. I didn’t enjoy being alone so I would talk to the viewers of my stories in hopes of escaping the thoughts in my head. It gave me short term comfort but over the years, I relied on Instagram to help me escape my reality. I started to seek validation from the people who would view my story. I would check who was viewing my story and think about them when I would record a story, almost like I was talking directly to them. It made me feel comforted. But slowly I started to hate being alone. During a 1 hour yoga class I would crave the comfort I received from looking at a screen. I couldn’t sit still. Even when I had to go to the bathroom, I would want to share my every thought to my story. It was too much. So I finally did it and I’ll bet you can guess it; Deleting instagram did not make me feel better.

I would start to grow dependent on other things, like TikTok, or my boyfriend, or a TV show. I realized that I just have a deeply codependent personality and deleting an app was not going to fix my problems. So I started to make some real changes. I got a new therapist. This was so hard because when I dropped out of college in 2020 my old therapist was there to comfort me and be my only light in a dark world. She was there when my beloved family dog died last year. I realized that just like Instagram, I was dependent on her. So I faced my fear and got a new therapist.

Being codependent is hard. Especially when you are in a relationship. I was, and still sometimes am, so dependent on my boyfriend. If I am not texting him or talking on FaceTime with him, I feel like I am dying. I am not exaggerating here, being away from him felt like death. When he would go on vacation for a week I would cry and beg him not to go; This is when it became a problem. So him and I decided that in order for my codependency to get better we would need to not be so codependent. No more texting every day. No more walking me to every class. No more telling him every detail of my life. That shit was so hard. But it made me realize how much I hate being by myself. You don’t have to hate yourself to hate being alone. I wasn’t actively cutting my legs like how I did in high school, but by being in a state of constant distraction, I was hurting myself again.

So through these new ways of cutting off my safety bubble I was testing my codependency. Now, how does any of this have to do with deleting instagram. I guess the point is this: deleting an app isn’t going to save your mental health.

Just like how dieting won’t make you love your body, doing yoga won’t make you less mentally ill, and how breaking up with your boyfriend won’t make you love yourself more. You have to see the problem and how it starts to effect every part of your being. How does it hurt you? Your love life? Your work life? Your friends? How does it make you function or not function?

And don’t let anyone tell you that you need to delete instagram, because I did and I still have problems.