Let’s start with what led me to delete my Instagram in the first place. The truth is I had conflicting feelings towards the app

Lately, I’ve been spending far too much time on my phone. I feel as if every time I seem to have a spurt of inspiration, I simultaneously have an urge to go on my phone, and the inspiration is lost amidst the mindless scrolling of Instagram.
So here I am writing this article instead.
Let’s start with what led me to delete my Instagram in the first place. The truth is I had conflicting feelings towards the app for years. The main conflicting feeling being; I was aware that the more time I spent on Instagram, the worse I felt about myself and my life. I knew this yet couldn’t seem to do anything about it.
It wasn’t until I was living abroad that I took the much-needed break from social media.

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If my future self could have told my pre-Berlin self, like, “Hey, you’re actually going to delete Instagram when you get there,” I would have been in utter disbelief. There’s no way. In fact, my plans were quite the opposite. I was planning to grow my following to become an influencer.
But it was only after two short months of living abroad that things took an unexpected turn, and I decided to do it. To completely delete my Instagram account with no looking back.
Everything in my life was suddenly different. I now lived in this metropolitan city on the other side of the world, where I knew only one other person on the entire continent. The population of Berlin alone was larger than the population of my whole province back home. I was in the perfect situation to do something like this. I had complete freedom to figure out who I am and be myself without any unspoken pressure of behaving a certain way because of living in a small city where everyone more or less knows everyone. There were no more prior expectations of who I should be based on who I’ve been.
There was no judgement, just freedom.
I remember scrolling through my page days before deleting my account and realizing just how self-absorbed I was. My entire Instagram feed was just photos of me attempting to look my best. My camera roll was full of selfies and photos of myself.
I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with being confident and liking how you look but is that really confidence?
I’m not sure.
I started wearing less makeup and quit styling my hair every day, and I was hardly on my phone anymore. This was a big change for me, considering that I was obsessed with the Kardashians and wanted nothing more than to look like Kylie Jenner when I lived in Canada. I was the queen of selfies and having outlandish Snapchat stories. I wanted and needed to capture every moment for social media.
I hardly knew myself then, and my content reflected that.
Back then, I was insecure, and as I would scroll for hours, I would constantly compare myself to other girls, which surprise surprise does not help you feel better about yourself. I knew that the more time I spent scrolling and comparing myself to others, the worse I felt about myself. I knew this but couldn’t stop, let alone even fathom the idea of deleting my account. There was no way I could not have an Instagram…
Some days I would wake up and decide I would post a selfie to Instagram that day. I would spend an hour or sometimes longer taking the same selfie over and over. An hour!!! For the same photo!!! There would be fifty photos of me looking the same, god, maybe even more than fifty. And I didn’t like any of them!!! So I would keep taking more.
For what???
For the validation from ‘likes’ that I looked good.
And god forbid you don’t get as many likes as you’re expecting. If you don’t get that many likes, you’re embarrassed and ask yourself, why am I not getting likes? Honestly, it’s so dumb. You feel a bit less of yourself.
So here I was caught in this weird contradiction. I was so self-absorbed yet so insecure at the same time. Obsessed with how I looked but also not liking how I looked.
If I had one hair out of place or a pimple on my chin, it was all I could see. Something so small and insignificant was able to take me down entirely.
As much as I wanted my Instagram to be unique and reflect who I am and, um, well, be cool, I was sucked into doing what everyone else was doing. Posting the same kind of content.
So, what did I miss during the year I had it deleted?
Nothing.
I thought I would miss having Instagram, but not having it freed up an unbelievable amount of time.
Let’s be honest. Instagram is a time suck. An absolute time suck. Unless you are using it for your job, which I was not. Whether you’re scrolling mindlessly through other people’s lives or thinking about your next post, or taking the perfect photo, thinking of the perfect caption… You’re spending your time on what is ultimately this