The Year I Took Off Social Media: Check-In

Honest check-in on some thoughts on my time away from insta

If you’re new here, hello! Thank you so much for being here, it means so much to little ol’ me, truly.

I am writing here to share about my experience with taking a year off of Instagram. It has been seven months so I thought it was time for a check-in.

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There are many ways my break from Instagram has impacted me for the better, you can read some of those things here! 

I have a list of things that have recently come to mind and I wanted to be honest with myself (and you guys). There are things I miss about Instagram.  

I was part of the first wave of Instagram users back in 2012. I remember doing three things when I got my first iPhone after having a mid-2000s slide-out keyboard phone for years. I can’t remember the name of it, but you know the ones. The things I did with my newfound tech were: download Facebook, Instagram, and the game Draw Something so I could play with my best friends in the one cool teacher’s class that let us be on our phones after teaching for the day. 

“Instagram was a different place back then,” said every millennial ever (it’s me, I’m the millennial). I have my first post ever– a picture of me in the car after getting a haircut, with Zooey Deschanel in mind. I got straight across thick bangs (fringe) right before going off to college, the caption “me”. The next photo is a sepia-esque filtered photo of my foot with my first tattoo on it (it has been taken down by me, sorry lol) with the caption, “new tat #hardcore”. I had a picture of a coffee, again with a filter that made everything tinted a nice warm orange glow with the caption “love coffee #latteart”. Wow, what a time to be alive. 

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I share this as a way to reminisce on the simplicity of that time. My use of Instagram as an adult is not surprising to anyone. I used it to snoop on people I used to go to high school with that I no longer speak to. To remember people’s names and who married who from college acquaintances. To keep in touch with my actual friends in dm’s sending a “congrats girl” on baby news. Most frequently, it was used for sending memes or funny video clips back and forth with even my best friends or husband daily with blurbs like “this is so us” or just the simple “you”. I made a point to follow artists, authors or musicians I love to keep up with what’s new. I started following activism accounts because I realized I knew nothing about politics, climate change, news or anything of importance. I followed influencers too, but not many of those (lol). 

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The things I miss most though are not really any of those things per se, although the memes did get me through some hard days with a little “ha” laugh here and there. The art and beautiful photos inspired me to go places I have never been or pretend to in my head anyway, a lovely mental escape. 

I think the thing I might be missing most is being in the know. FOMO was one of my biggest qualms at times. That subconscious jealousy creeping in and causing discontent to wreak havoc in my mind. In a way, I think it is still following me but without needing to see what I missing out on. 

I miss watching content from my favorite musicians supporting them with comments and likes and sharing their art. Being a part of the musician community myself, I know how important sharing your friends’ projects is and I feel guilt when I don’t know about a new single or am unable to share it massively for them. 

Perhaps the biggest thing I miss is the connection to people I care about that I no longer see in person. You know the people that you are often only connected to through that platform. This is probably a weird thing to do, maybe you all can weigh in on this– I didn’t “announce” I was leaving or taking a break. People in my corner on the app were on some moral high ground about not needing to whistle for attention when you take a break, since “everyone does it”, so I didn’t. I told maybe three people but in real-life face-to-face conversations. No one on the app knew I had disappeared, and maybe still don’t. For all they know I am just a passive user or worse maybe I am not alive anymore or I didn’t exist in their sphere like they did in mine. 

That said, a close friend reached out to me, after five months of no texts and said “hey, I just realized I haven’t heard from you.” I responded, “yeah it’s because we stayed in touch through Instagram and I have been taking a break from it.” They commended me for taking time away saying they should do that too– a common response when I say I am taking a year away, by the way, interesting. Then they apologized for not reaching out sooner. They are the only ones that have done that– reached out and wondered. So that experience without a doubt opened my eyes to the parasocial world I was certainly living in (even with friends perhaps. Although that term is used mostly for celebrities I digress). 

I don’t hold bitterness towards anyone, I think I just feel a bit of sadness maybe. When I think about my daughter and her experience with friendships as she grows and enters the digital world (at the right age, where she can handle it we hope). Will she have meaningful connections outside of digital mediums with others or will the beast that is “the internet” continue to break that down until the only way we connect is through a screen? Or will society swing the other way as we are so prone to do historically and ban all screens twenty years from now (I doubt it but it’s an interesting thought.)

I also miss the dog memes and comic dino doodles and lord birthday. Those made me smile. It is nice to be here though which has become my new form of social media I will admit with pro’s and con’s of its own. (mostly pro’s bros)