When—and Why—I Decided I Hated Social Media

By Katya Lien, college student

I recently deleted all of my Instagram followers. Well, not all of them. But over one thousand of them. And here’s why...

Instagram is toxic, I mean we can all probably agree on that (save for memes; memes are definitely Instagram’s one major redeeming quality). I’ve spent a lot more time than I’d like to admit scrolling through profiles of Instagram models, going over every last little thing about my body that doesn’t look like theirs. And the worst part is that every time I feel myself about to go down that ‘back hole’ of an Instagram scrolling session, I know that I shouldn’t be doing it. It’s literally like a scene out of those cartoons with an angel and a devil on each shoulder. The angel is self-worth and productivity, and the devil is comparison and a sure-fire way to dismantle my self-esteem.

I’ll backtrack a bit. I got an Instagram freshman year of high school when I was 14. And it was sick. You could share photos, be creative, and keep up with your friends. Sounds harmless, right? But here’s the thing—whenever I’d post a picture, each “like” created a little dopamine rush. And as I gained followers and posted more frequently, I couldn’t help but want each subsequent photo to get more likes than the last. It’s like a screwed up Pavlovian response--and I started to realize that the photos that would get the most likes were photos of ME. So instead of posting the photo of the mountains from a hike that I really wanted to share, I’d be more inclined to post a photo of me at the top of the hike—not the actually view. And for what? For a tiny pixelated number to increase. For someone’s thumb to double tap on something that they’ll forget they even saw in ten minutes.

It’s not nice to say, but it got to a point where I would want to go places literally just for the photo. I wanted to trade my time and happy memories for digital “Likes”. And that’s where FaceTune came in...

One of my friends had downloaded FaceTune and told me about it—an app where you can airbrush any pimples or smooth out your skin. So, I downloaded it. And yes, you can erase blemishes and all that jazz but there are a hundred other things you can do. You can reshape your face. Yes, I said reshape your face. You can pull your waist in, make your butt bigger, and more. And it all looks pretty legit. And once you start tweaking one thing, it’s hard to stop yourself from tweaking more. I’d be hanging out with my girl friends and everyone would be curating and FaceTuning photos for their Instagrams. “I always make my chin less square.” “Oh really? I always make mine squarer!” “I pull in my shoulders.” “I cinch my waist.” On and on and on.

And that was kind of the tipping point for me. I didn’t want to trade in life (days spent looking for photo ops and hours spent editing) for a digital facade. I mean, people see you in real life. They know what you look like. There’s literally no point in trying to give yourself digital plastic surgery on an Instagram photo because no matter how your FaceTune makes you look, people are still going to see you, in person, at your school tomorrow.

And the idea that a photoshopped image should give you any self-esteem is so contradictory. Self-esteem should be about you. About the true you. It’s about embracing yourself, your body, your personality, and your mind. It’s not about the fake, online version of you. I realized that I was deriving way too much self-worth from strangers and acquaintances liking a filtered, edited photo of me. And so that’s when I deleted over one-thousand Instagram followers from my account. Now I only follow and am followed by two-hundred people. All people that I care about. And only people that I care about.

I’m happier. I’m not wasting my life in search of a photo op. Photos are now about capturing memories. And that’s the way it should be.