Jessai Flores
On Sunday, Sept. 14, I deleted Instagram. I’d love to have a well-thought-out explanation for why I held down the icon and pressed “remove app,” but honestly, it was entirely on a whim. I was summoned by the anti-social media gods and took a stab at a lifestyle without a purpley-orange tie-dye app.
Now, in its absence, I’ve given my Instagram usage a lot of thought. Yes, the anti-social media gods summoned me that Sunday afternoon, but I have been the one to actively decide to keep Instagram gone. Well, I kept it gone until Handsome Dan came into play. Here’s how it went:
The first 24 hours without Instagram were weird. I experienced withdrawal. And I don’t mean that I was thinking about Instagram all the time, longing to scroll endlessly through birthday posts, sports memes and AI-generated reels of Elon Musk. I mean that my body was physically accustomed to its presence. Every time I’d go on my phone, my thumbs would be magnetized to the spot on my homescreen where the app had once been. I’d swipe down on my suggested apps page to go click on the icon just to meet a void-of-Instagram screen.
It was only in the reminder of the app’s absence that I comprehended how subconsciously attached to it I was. Only without Instagram could I see how often I’d unconsciously go to it without purpose.
Sure, there were some consequences of not having it. I wasn’t as plugged into recent events (but why is Instagram such a prominent news source anyway? That can’t be good). I forgot some birthdays (Instagram is admittedly a great birthday calendar). And, most notably, I had no way of looking people up. On a campus with roughly 6,000 undergraduate students, the amount of times a name is mentioned that I cannot place a face to or that I have never heard is, well, a lot. Instagram is a social Google. I underestimated how often I’d used Instagram for this.
After two weeks on hiatus, I came to the rather simple conclusion that I was missing absolutely nothing. The main justification I have for my (over) use of social media is that it’s a form of communication. But frankly, Instagram is the social media platform my friends and I use the least for communication. That justification is more relevant to my keeping of Snapchat (which I have yet to dare to delete … maybe I’ll write a part two).
But as I mentioned, Handsome Dan interfered: my redownloading of Instagram came when I was posted on Handsome Dan’s account. This was a once-in-a-lifetime experience. I was back.
In all honesty, I could have just asked a friend to send me a screenshot. Despite all of the “enlightenment” that my hiatus gifted me, Instagram has an undeniably strong gravity.
Some might call it addiction. I still felt a subtle pull towards that tie-dye icon, and Handsome Dan’s Nina Bodow feature sucked me right back into the Instagram orbit. I wonder what it takes to hit escape velocity.