80 days without Instagram and I didn’t die

I recently gave up Instagram for 80 days. Here's how it went.

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The first time I ever posted on Instagram was on April 3rd, 2012. It was a filtered selfie of me at the gym, looking to the side (how forward thinking of me) with old school wireless earphones (pre airpods) a towel over my shoulder and the caption, "I still got it!"

It has no likes and no comments.

I posted four other photos that day. Some with short captions, some with no captions. All heavily filtered.

At that time, Facebook was just then really picking up speed and I remember people thinking...another one? Is this going to be the "thing" that takes down Facebook? It hadn't been that long before that FB took out MySpace after all.

I also remember conversation at the water cooler centered around - "Wait, so you just share pics? What's so fun about that?"

As I scrolled back through the first few years of my instagram feed, I remembered how fun it was then.

There were no influencers.
There were no ads.
There were no stories or videos or noise that would surprise you while you were scrolling.

The feed was chronological so when you arrived at a picture you had already seen you knew you had seen everything. You could close the app and move on to something else easily.

What a different freaking world!

Anyone who uses Instagram doesn't need a diatribe from me on just how different of a platform it has become. As it now embraces Reels more and more, I fear this might be the final nail in the coffin of what Instagram used to be.

TikTok is not a social media platform, it's an entertainment platform. I will die on this hill. As Insta embraces the TikTok model more and more, it becomes even less about connecting with people, friends and brands that you know and love - and becomes more about being "sold to" by ads and influencers and never seeing anything your friend might post or story.

Insta has also become a hotbed for cancel culture. You say one "wrong" thing and you run the risk of the mob coming after you and working to destroy your life. We've all seen it happen and dang it's ugly. The underlying fear that some random follower who doesn't know you might go to "war" with you because they disagree with something you said, breeds self-censorship and less authenticity.

All that being said, Instagram has had its fair share of benefits as well. I have made amazing personal friends from Instagram. I have rekindled friendships through Instagram. My business has been very successful in large part to brand building on Instagram. Despite some of the (more recent) negatives, in large part there are still a lot of positives about the platform.

But over the last few years as the algorithm continues to reward content creators and influencers, I've felt the strain and anxiety that I know a lot of others on Instagram feel as well.

I run a business, but I don't run a production company. As more and more people fully embrace basically hosting their own reality TV shows through their Instagram page, where does that leave everyone else?

I know some people might say, "Cinnamon, things change, you gotta change too if you want to keep up!" And maybe that's the case, but at some point, it breaks, right? Not everyone can be an influencer with hundreds of thousands of followers.

The more the algorithm continues to reward engagement and clicks and likes and shares and follows, then the everyday person who wants to simply share and connect with friends, or the small business owner who wants to share about their business and services essentially gets pushed out. Nothing they share will ever be seen by the people who want to see it, so eventually they will give up.

I've seen this happen to so many people and a lot of this is why I wanted to stop using Instagram for a prolonged period of time. I wanted to really see how it would affect me. Would the FOMO be unbearable? Would I miss things? Would people even notice I was gone? Would it affect my life in a negative way or a positive way? Would I have more time? More energy? Would it affect my business?

I'm so happy you asked...let me give you the answers to all those questions as well as some additional insights about my time away AND my rough plans for going forward on the platform!

Would the FOMO be unbearable?

There was some FOMO from time to time, but it was anything BUT unbearable. I was already feeling relatively disillusioned with the platform and enjoying my time spent there less and less. So I was kind of LFTMO - looking forward to missing out. ha!

Would I miss things?

You know what they say, "you don't know what you don't know." I didn't avoid other social media platforms so I didn't feel totally disconnected. I also continued to text/chat with my close friends so I didn't feel too out of the loop in that regard.

Would people even notice I was gone?

I did receive quite a few messages from friends telling me they missed seeing my face and hearing my voice on insta. I think that for a lot of other people who I chat with ONLY on insta, my absence was less noticeable for pretty obvious reasons. When you watch 100+ people's lives on your phone, you likely aren't going to really notice when one goes away.

Would it affect my life in a negative way or a positive way?

Overall, it was positive. Since I was looking to replace the “connections” I normally got from instagram, I became more involved in IRL activities and was more active and involved in building stronger relationships and friendships with people in my life and local community.

Would I have more time?

I absolutely had more time. Depending on how you approach instagram it can take a lot of time and mental energy to think about what you are going to post or say on stories or goodness...prepping, planning and putting together Reels. On top of that, even if you don't even post or do anything else, simply watching other people's stories or getting lost in the Reels feed or going down rabbit holes...they all suck your time away.

The biggest time saver for me was time saved not having to think about what to post or share. Because of the reasons mentioned above (I have no real interest in growing my audience or becoming an influencer etc...) my struggle recently has been - what do I even do on this platform?

If I have to come up with WOW content even to get the people who want to see my stuff to see it, it's draining and exhausting. And the half the time doesn't even work...so why try ya know?

More energy?

100%. Without having to spend the brain energy on all of the above, I had way more energy to focus on all sorts of other things including house projects, small groups outside the house and of course, writing.

Would it affect my business?

This is one of those questions to which I will never know the actual answer. I continued to get inquiries and booked clients throughout my time away. Would I have gotten more had I been posting consistently? I have no idea.

I will say that around 85% of my business comes from word of mouth referrals, so in my mind, my Insta page for my business is really just proof of life. If someone is told, "you should use Cinnamon for editing...she's so great!" and they go to my Insta, I want them to get a taste of who I am and what I offer. "Cold" leads from Insta only are not usually as quality as word of mouth, so IMO my absence for this time had little if any affect on my business.

Some other interesting observations etc...

I really missed messaging with friends and followers. Even though I was sharing less before I left, when I did share, I would get a good amount of messages. I always love 1:1 conversation and messaging on IG feels like texting but without the hassle of everyone having your phone number. Also, the stories usually prompt the conversation, it's not just like texting someone out of the blue.

To a lesser degree I missed some of the content from a few influencers I follow. It’s like watching a TV show for a while and then stopping mid-season and wondering what happened next.

I would like to say that I missed seeing my personal friends, but honestly over the past couple of years I feel like I see people I know less and less. I still follow them and engage when I do see them, but sometimes I would go months without seeing anything from them and would have to physically go to their page to see their stuff.

I did miss sharing my own life, but not as much as I thought I would. There were times when something funny happened and I felt the urge to open my phone and tell the story, or times when I was doing something fun that I felt the urge to share, but that didn’t happen as often as I thought it might.

I did not miss the divisiveness, people "calling out" other people or brands, the mean comments, the drama. Instead I found myself with real people in real life, sitting around real tables having real discussions - sometimes even about tense or controversial subjects - and no one yelled, no one called anyone names, no one tried to get anyone fired or said something awful or terrible.

I also didn't miss all of the cringe content. One thing I've really noticed stepping away from all of this "content" is how cringe everything is. Especially with Reels. You know how once a hot sound starts blowing up and the first 10 times you hear it you smile and are like, "oh that's fun"! And then by about the 20th time you swipe away so fast because it's become the most annoying sound in the world?

That's kind of how I feel about most content on Insta. Everyone is just copying everyone else - hoping they will go viral? Hoping they will become an influencer? A lot of it boils down to people simply needing affirmation and validation that someone cares. It makes my heart hurt when I think about it. We need Jesus ya'll. Now more than ever.

So what is my plan going forward?

Even as I have prepared to "get back on the app" over the past few days, I've started to feel more anxious. My mind instantly starts going into business mode. But the thing is...I don't want to grow a following. My life is full. It's rich with friendships and family and travel and experiences. My business is doing well. "Pics or it didn't happen" does not apply.

Because of all of this, I need to formulate a new goal when it comes to spending any time on Insta. What will it look like for me to share without there being an ulterior motive? I need a new mindset and because my mindset has been so business focused for so long, it's going to be a challenge.

I'm in the process of unfollowing a lot of people, and will be removing some of my followers as well. I might also be muting some stories because ultimately, the less content I consume the better.

Basically, I want to swim upstream. I don't want to do what everyone else is doing.

I want to focus on less, but more meaningful connections, you know, the exact opposite of what everyone else is trying to do on Insta. I’m going to share more words and less sounds. I’m leaning into fully knowing and believing that God will use me ultimately for his glory. He doesn’t need my “platform” and there is so much freedom in that truth.

I’m excited to live in that freedom for a while as opposed to the shackles of content performance.

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