When Should I Quit Instagram?

Can I quit Instagram?

Photo by Alexander Grey on Unsplash

I found the stock photo above by searching for “phone” and “depressed woman.” That’s how I feel this morning. A depressed woman with a phone in her hand that wants to throw it against the wall and quit all the apps. I say this all the time. I want to quit Instagram. I need to quit Instagram. I do not like Instagram. It steals time away from me, from my family, from my actual writing.

And yet, and yet, and yet.

I have a book to promote and that promotion relies heavily on my social accounts. I want to reach as many readers as possible because I love The Sicilian Inheritance SO MUCH. I also love reaching and connecting with listeners of Under the Influence and readers of this substack. Instagram is the place where I mainly do that these days and I am so grateful for how often we get to DM and chat and you sending me all of the suggestions for episodes and hilarious memes. But what if we could do that somewhere else that didn’t also come with so much toxicity?

Why am I thinking about this right now? I recently read two beautiful essays about quitting Instagram altogether and transitioning away from it.

The writer Marlee Grace just wrote about quitting Instagram altogether on their substack.

Yesterday morning I woke up and knew I needed to log out of Instagram. Not just for a break, not just for a little bit, not until my next book is announced, but forever. I logged out of Instagram forever.

Their fears are VERY similar to my fears.

I am afraid of :

Not making enough money to stay afloat and chip away at my debt

Being totally irrelevant

Being single forever because I can’t find people to have crushes on

Missing out on what my friends are doing

Never getting another book deal

And the crazy thing is that these fears ARE valid for working writers today. But Marlee did it. They quit. I’m not there yet, but one day I might be.

In

Tales of a Mother

Claudia Wilde writes beautifully about the push/pull that we all feel from the platform.

I felt inspired and motivated by it various times over the course of the years.

However it has also led me down the road of comparison, feeling unworthy and not good or productive enough. There were days I left it feeling dull and unable to want to create at all and I also want to shed a light on that. Truthfully I have been pondering to leave it all for quite a few years.

I give myself another year on social media. In the meantime I want to transition to being more visible here because this feels like a much less toxic platform to spend time together. And I have created some rules for myself with regards to social in order to say it out loud and try to keep myself honest which is so fucking hard.