My life has become me trying to find some balance between the digital world and the tangible one. What makes social media bad? What makes good connections fufilling? I don't really know (and I don't think I ever will) but maybe this blog will satisfy the piece of me that still identifies with having a good instagram feed.
I deleted my instagram account on March 22nd. For those who have never deleted an Instagram account, its slightly more than the click of a button. They hide the delete button 5 layers deep in settings, they ask you why, they give you alternatives, and then there's a 30 day grace period. So officially I will have no instagram on April 22nd, but March is really the end for me.
This is a big deal!!! I have had that account for 12 years!!! I got instagram when I was 10 and I am almost 22 now. My discontent with social media probably began in 2020, I think that is when the "analog" movement started to take shape. Deleting some apps was easy, I was off Snapchat and Tiktok for a few months and barely missed them, but Instagram is the real beast. It wasn't until about a year ago I realized that the only way I would ever stay off Instagram was to delete my account. This solution felt scary. My identity was so deeply rooted in Instagram that I felt like I would be loosing a piece of myself (because I would be). I was in 4th grade when I created an account, that app practically raised me. I spent so many middle school nights planning out feeds, taking photos, and editing them. I wasn't ready to loose all of the information that I had accumulated.
Essentially, the disgust of aligning my personal identity so closely with an app pushed me to finally click the button. And so here marks a new beginning, or some old beginning's end. "ainskeys", "itss.ains", "ainsley.rachel", or whatever other username that account once held is DEAD and reborn. Like a phoenix rising from the ashes! Ainskeys as a blog has much more potential. Here I can still upload my amazing photos and brag about my most recent travels. However, I have no way of knowing if anyone has seen it nor do I expect anyone to see it. If someone is reading this, that is probably because I told them to go check out my blog irl. Hello to my dear friends <3
Life AD (After Deletion) is amazing. Once I got over the paralyzing idea of being out of touch with society, I realized that instagram never connected me to anything. I never needed to know about my "best friend from 8th grade's ex boyfriend's friend's" vacation to Mexico City. The information that matters to me will find me. I have more time to be present in my community since less of it is spent watching videos of strangers on the internet.
While my FOMO hasn't gone away, I feel significantly better about myself. There is a subliminal level of comparison that occurs when I was on Instagram. Even if I felt like I was thinking critical about content, there was still a level of my self worth being tested by other people's highlight reels. It builds this underlying discontent in me that I was only able to notice after being offline for a long period of time.
Overall I finally feel free! I live with less of a "surveillance mentality" now. I used to sit in my room thinking "how could I make this moment worth posting," constantly worrying about how good I looked. For god's sake let me relax and be ugly. I do feel some loss for the posts I planned to make (i.e. grad posts) but I will still get to have those photos for myself. Maybe I will share them here.
P.S. This line of thinking feels very high flutin' to me. I am in no way trying to push an agenda of deleting instagram, I understand that is not a possibility for everyone. I think the analog movement is consumeristic and privledged but not unbased.