The biggest part for teenagers is to be connected. To be updated on the social events and connections, be involved within the circles, and just to fit in. You’ve seen how addicted we can be on our phones, mindlessly scrolling through TikTok or clicking through Instagram, posing for snaps and furiously typing away to who knows what group chat or friend. And this isn’t a story of how different I am and how great I am for that. But rather me coming to terms with myself that I too have that same problem.
I actually did something I never thought I would have ever done before. I deleted Instagram from my phone, almost two weeks ago. For my birthday, each year, I get one special privilege that lets me do something I haven’t done before. When I was 5, I was allowed to paint my nails, 15 was dying my hair, and 13 was getting social media. The social media in question was Instagram and Twitter. I wasn’t, and still aren’t too fond of Snapchat, so I thought Instagram was a really good, neutral option. It was. At the beginning I didn’t have that many followers, as I wasn’t really socially active that year due to my own academic goals coming out of COVID. Yet I still was present on the app frequently through the day. That usage grew as I entered high school and met a lot of different people. For those I didn’t have numbers of, I had Instagram dms. I met mutuals, people my friends were friends with and I vaguely knew, who I later became good friends with as well. I even met people who I knew in context, whispers of their name because of their success, and became really good friends with them because we followed each other. A really good friend of mine who I now talk to frequently came from Instagram. Specifically, them following me and then responding to my stories leading to countless discussions, debates, and jokes. This person, who I’ve regarded for my entire time I’ve heard of them as a kid, and later being in my class last year, and I probably would’ve have gotten this close had one small follow never happened. One small conversation. You constantly meet and interact with new people through these platforms.
I’ve also grown to follow a lot of my favorite music artists on Instagram. I follow their personal accounts, the official accounts, and keep up with their new comebacks, posts from visiting new places, and in general anything a fan does. I felt like I couldn’t bear missing out. What if Lee Chan suddenly posts and I wasn’t there to see it? In theory, that would be devastating. After all he is chronically offline and any activity on instagram is like a miracle. But otherwise, what happens then? Would it have killed me? Would my world have fallen apart? At the height of my social media activity, yes, it would have.
I remember when I stopped tweeting for a while, and my dad called me out for it, making me delete Instagram until I tweeted everyday nonstop. In desperation to gain back my beloved platform, I made sure I posted as much as I could, found specific articles and tweets to reply and QRT, in hopes of gaining back Instagram. When I did I felt so relieved. I felt better. But my addiction got worse. (Now, I don’t have that bad of an addiction. I would say it’s mostly normal, but to me I spend far too much time on social media to my own liking, and that’s why I call it an addiction.) When I first got Instagram I rarely used stories. I rarely posted, and still don’t, but over time I got more used to posting on my stories frequently. The need to update everyone about my social life, about every single thing got to me. Witness testimonies can show that I would have a close story notification every day, sometimes multiple times a day. I had conversations with people on the app, leading me to constantly open it to respond. Notification after notification for each story being liked also resulted in this. My levels of activity increased.
I realized that myself a few weeks ago as well. I started with the idea of posting less frequently, reducing how many times I shared something online. But I was still active. I was scrolling mindlessly, liking posts and reels and stories, continuously checking my Lock Screen notifications to see who responded or texted me. It wasn’t any better. It wasn’t until I actually ended a conversation with someone that all my chats were empty that I deleted the app. (Ended the conversation as in there was that peaceful end to a conversation where there’s nothing else to add.) I remember it being a random Wednesday, at 4:45 in the morning where I looked at my phone and without hesitation just deleted it. I thought to myself “what am I even doing with my life”, and “what’s the point”. I wanted to see how bad it would affect me. And really, it didn’t. There were times I was tempted to throughout the day to reinstall the app, or login online on a browser tab but I tried to hold my ground on not doing so. I didn’t want to give in. And really, it felt amazing. I caught myself so many times trying to click on the space where the app icon previously sat on my Home Screen. It was bad. But there was a sort of relief that came with not having to check every story and reel. I felt better.
Now, have my Instagram, activity levels gone down? Significantly, yes. However I will admit that I am still active on the app. It’s counterintuitive to my initial action yes, but in my defense I was previously heavily addicted to the app. To be able to cut myself off, or anyone from anything similar, takes some time. I wanted to start by reducing the number of times I opened the app by deleting the app itself. Then when I felt the urge to log on I instead went to the browser. The browser in my opinion is a brilliant way to prevent myself from logging on because it’s so slow. It takes ages to properly load new posts, let you click on stories and react to them, and in general limits a lot of your overall activity. For that I really just avoided logging on often, because it’s as such a hassle. In terms of redownloading, I’ve only done so when I wanted to post something. My levels of posting have gone down significantly. Now it’s gone down, to once or twice a week, and that was for basic things like a new hair update or something silly I needed to share. Otherwise I made sure to keep it at a bare minimum.
The way this all came to be, logging onto the browser, was because I deleted the app in secret. I didn’t tell anyone about it, and still haven’t told most people. My parents found out that night and were flabbergasted in the fact I did it myself, out of pure will simply because I felt like it. (Also because I took the initiative after they told me to so many times before as a suggestion.) For that, people still kept texting me. Sending me attachments of posts and reels, or just talking. I told one of my friends that I haven’t been active all day since I deleted it, and they were like, “Oh, I sent you something some time ago.” So I log on a few times throughout the day to respond to those people. But otherwise I try to make my activity short. A maximum of 5 minutes. Respond to a dm, watch only a highly necessary story- from a close friend that’s not spam reels, or occasionally a group I follow, and then quickly exit the browser. Messages get responded to 10+ hours later, which is in my part better for me because it means I haven’t been logging on that often, but also tells me that I’ve reduced my distraction levels from getting hooked onto a chat and spending my hours away.
I think that’s overall reduced my levels of phone activity as well. I spend most of my time on Twitter now, but to some extent. I’ve silenced most group chats and contacts to avoid continuously checking my phone, and that’s helped on so many levels. It’s helped me prioritize a lot more things to get things done faster, as well as maintain a good balance between the social and academic parts of my day. Now this post wasn’t a whole I deleted Instagram and accomplished something amazing better than others post, but rather a reflection and coming to terms with myself over an addiction I still share to some extent with so many teenagers my age.
Our phones, no matter how crucial and important they’ve come to us in certain situations, have also become our greatest downfall and addiction. For this, I, after so many years of denying I had an addiction, let it grow to a point where it suddenly hit me that I couldn’t deny it anymore. I think that for me, since I started to grow into that stage of being able to balance the two, being so addicted to my phone , I checked it so many times through the day. The fact that I deleted the app willingly without hesitation was the first step in fixing that. Of course, there are so many ways to stop being addicted, but for me I felt that doing something this strong, that I’d never thought myself to do and always was against the thought of, was a big step in letting me fix that and get myself under control. Especially since junior year is so critical and incredibly important before I graduate.
For me what I’ve learned from this is that it takes a strong will to cause a significant change in your life. Things aren’t that easy to accomplish, and you need to actually put yourself forward head on in order to do something. It takes an understanding of your own self as well as being able to prioritize what matters most to you, before you can take that stand. Furthermore, we need to understand exactly to what extent our moderation becomes an addiction. Sometimes we think we’re managing it fine and limiting ourselves but we really need to sit down and understand whether that’s true or not. And really, at the end of the day social media is going to be everywhere. At this day and age we can’t avoid it regardless of how hard we try, so it’s better to just control it ether than letting it control us.
So yeah, there’s my small personal update and accomplishment I wanted to share.
PS, in conclusion, my dm responses will be delayed!
