Tidying up my Instagram account
Ideothetic Flow
Hi!
As I continue writing this newsletter I intend to occasionally share some of my own thoughts rather than purely content from others. So, rather than share an article this week, I want to share my own experience in auditing my tech usage.
In trying to become more productive and reduce mindless content consumption, I recently conducted a clean-up of my Instagram account. unfollowing accounts that did not belong to friends, such as travel, food, or creative accounts.
My Instagram habit
I always enjoyed Instagram as my preferred way to keep updated on whats friends have been doing. It offers a quick glimpse into whether they are travelling, going to some interesting event, or learning a new skill. Often, whenever I have a few minutes of downtime, or would like a quick break from some work, I would quickly flick through my feed.
Unfortunately, this developed into a subconscious habit where I would often pick up my phone, open the app and start scrolling through my feed almost on autopilot. I end up wasting a significant amount of time throughout the day on this, which could have been used doing something productive, or getting some quiet rest. (My wife and I often say we are "trapped in an endless loop of cat videos") This was less of a problem initially, when there were no ads, and I mainly followed friends. The length of the feed is not so long that I would spend too much time, and it was nice to get updated on what those around me were doing.
Changing nature of Instagram
I feel that over the last two or three years, as digital marketing has expanded and Instagram is both a marketing platform and a social media platform, more and more of my Instagram experience involves various marketing content and less of seeing my friends.
Now, every business and influencer has an Instagram account, there are also a large number of creative accounts out there. I loved the beautiful pictures of holiday resorts, witty comics, updates on latest events and restaurants, and of course, cat videos. I followed quite a number of them, and they were a good source of entertainment and ideas. The problem with these accounts is that to maintain visibility, they post very frequently. Within an hour, my feed would easily fill up with new updates, which I would be rewarded for checking. It became an easy way to waste time, even if a better activity was available.
What I learnt from the experience
After doing this, I realised how much of my browsing time has been spent on external content rather than personal posts from friends. Most people tend to limit their posts to their stories, and proper posts happen less than once a week. If i were to check Instagram as often as I used to, I would end up having nothing new to see. This has helped me limit the amount of time I spend browsing it.
It also showed me that the accounts I followed, while pleasant to look at, were merely nice to have, but not important to my life. I only browsed them because it was convenient to do so at the time, and once the convenience was taken away, I feel little urge to seek them out again. Perhaps due to abit of FOMO, I made a separate handle to continue to follow most of those accounts in case I did want to have some scrolling now and then for fun. The mere barrier of having to switch accounts has been enough to keep me from checking this, and I do not feel any loss to my quality of life.
To end, I still think it is perfectly fine to use Instagram or any other platform or tool in the way you enjoy it best, and there definitely no need to do what I have done. What I could suggest is to periodically look inward and review your usage to see if you still truly enjoy it. For me, my own lack of willpower in putting it aside has forced me to take these steps, whereas this is not a problem for most others.
I would love to hear if you have some other ways to make the most out of Instagram, and continue to enjoy a balance of content from friends and others without letting it turn into a time sink as it had happened to me.
Have a great week ahead!
James
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Ideothetic Flow is a fortnightly newsletter where I reflect on insights that I have found useful in rethinking life in a more realistic way.
Modern culture, media, and technology, for all their benefits, have distorted the view of a complete and happy life. The ideas I share are those which have helped me gain a deeper understanding of my own identity and circumstances, and inspire change towards a happier life, and I hope they will do the same for anyone else who reads this.
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