I guess it’s been years since the last time I posted a picture on my Instagram feed, the reason is quite obvious “I just have nothing worth sharing”. Now there’s a relatively new way of sharing on Instagram, some people call it Insta Story or just Story…you get the point. It’s a way of sharing where you can post short 15 seconds of videos or pictures and they will be available for viewing for the next 24 hours. So basically I see people share a lot more by using Insta Story instead of permanently sharing by posting on their feeds.
Me and Instagram
Long story short after about 7 years of using Instagram and other social media platforms I began to notice that Instagram is no longer what it used to be, at least that’s how I initially felt about Instagram. I remember when people used it for sharing and sharing only even though nowadays I feel like it’s just full of people implicitly showing off. Don’t get me wrong! I’m fine with people showing off, but some of them took it too far that what they show off have nothing to do with what you want to see when you open up Instagram on your device.
Sure I still use Instagram to see what’s going on, some of my friends still send me posts through direct message and that’s about it. I put many of the people that I follow on mute, simply because the many posts they have shared were just irrelevant, I don’t need them and I will never even care.
“If I do not care why do I feel bothered?”
The answer is simple, it’s all the accumulation of all those irrelevant updates that I received by tapping on their Stories updates, it’s too freaking much that it got into my head. I’m an easily annoyed person and I know how to deal with it and that is by muting many of you fellas!
First I felt sorry because I barely knew how my friends were doing, but then I tried to use Instagram again to see how they’re doing and I immediately went back to muting them again. Sorry.
The point is I consider Instagram as an unhealthy platform now, or is it the people that I follow? Not really, I follow bunch of accounts that are relevant to my work and my study and guess what? When I browse the explore section I was delivered with bunch of unnecessary stuff.
Instagram VS friendship
I hate the idea of finding out how my friends are doing by checking out their Instagram, like “How’s he? Does he still work in that company?” “IDK let’s check him out on Instagram” where we could just simply ask humanly. I also don’t appreciate the idea of the way people share these days, believe me but I saw some friends of mine share their texts, private messages, even though there are still those who hide who they’re texting with. Still, I don’t think it’s cool to share your private messages to where a lot of people can see them. Good thing though, after a while of not using Instagram I get to filter the people whom I thought they were friends. I have fewer friends now, but they are the real ones.
It’s only my opinion and purely about me…
I personally think Instagram has evolved, the way its users feel about it may vary, but I genuinely feel it’s a very unhealthy place, in a very simple way of describing how I feel is that it delivers too much, so much more that I can take, sure at first one may not realise it but I have, maybe I just took it too seriously but no! I’m sure of what I put on this page. Thank you.
Where I am now on social media
Twitter. Twitter is full of what I need, I think it has a way to limit their own information so we do not spend too much on it especially time and your brain capacity, LOL.
What does it have to do with happiness?
See I labeled this post with happiness, I’m a living proof that a person can be so much happier without Instagram, I mean that’s probably not something you tried to achieve when you first signed up for Instagram right? But I have been in a phase where being accepted and recognised were two of what made me the happiest man, and I tried to achieve those two by sharing how I was doing on Instagram.
Doing a big project? Better post it on Stories! Having a nice dinner? Stories time it is! Going to the beach? Oh man people better see it! Enjoying a sunset with friends? Better take bunch of photos so people know I’m a happy person!
See? It was all about other people and how I expected them to respond to my stories, I expected them to recognise and accept me. It is awful and stressful when you do not get what you expect from people. So I stopped expecting.
Sure there are Instagram users that are getting benefits from it, influencers, business people, artists, but me? I do not gain more benefits than staying away from it. The only time it made me feel good was the time when I posted pictures and I got likes and comments. That’s all.
But…
If you’re a person who knows how to totally handle Instagram or you use it professionally well then go ahead with what you do! But if you feel stressed sometimes without any obvious reasons (because some people may not realise how stressed they really are) I suggest you take some time and reflect on yourself, social media has been a big part of our life today, not only Instagram, we have Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, and other stuff that I might not know and they can be the source of your stress because you use them frequently.
