After Apple came out with the update that told you how much time you were spending one each app daily and weekly– I was horrified. Not only was I spending too much time on my phone, but the main time sucker had been from Instagram. I was constantly scrolling through it during my downtime, whether it was on my couch watching tv or for a few minutes in between passing periods at school.
I’m not gonna lie, I love Instagram and I think it has many benefits. I love being able to stay connected with my friends and what they’re doing and I love the memes. But when I looked back on how I spent my time on Instagram, I realized that I was mainly looking at social media influencers and celebrities feeds.
After taking the time to reflect on why I spent the time doing this and how it made me feel, I realized how many of my insecurities stemmed from this habit. The sad reality is that these influential people (along with many of us) use extreme photoshopping and editing in order to present the best highlight reel of their life that they can. It’s this false image of perfection that creates a toxic and cookie cutter environment because it sends a signal that if you don’t dress, look, or act a certain way then there is something wrong with you.
For me, seeing everyone’s photoshopped bodies made me feel insecure about my own looks. I felt like I wasn’t tan enough, blonde enough, or skinny enough to meet the societal standard of beauty. I felt like my life wasn’t good enough because it wasn’t as perfect and consistently happy as everyone else’s. It seemed like everyone was just posting to compete about whose life was more perfect, and I always felt like I was losing.
But one day it hit me, Instagram itself wasn’t the problem. The problem is how people are using it. I was too busy following the wrong people who were promoting this false idealism of perfection and who were displaying the message of “the skinnier the better”. Instead of following people with this negative influence, I knew I needed to make a change to the content I was seeing on Instagram.
And that’
s exactly what I did. I said goodbye to the Kardashians and all the other people who made me feel worse about myself after looking at their posts. I have started to transform my feed into one that makes me feel uplifted after looking through it by following inspiring and positive people.
My favorite account that I have started following is called @I_weigh and was founded by actress Jameela Jamil. The account is part of a revolution to change the beauty standards created by 
photoshop and to make them more inclusive of all body types.It also centers its content around motivating people to value what’s within and to stay confident in the potential that they have (examples of her posts on the side).
For me, this technique of changing who I follow has been really successful as it has helped me stop myself from using the app for comparison or validation. Now I find myself using Instagram less obsessively and I don’t feel any negative emotions after using it because I no longer view it as a competition. I’m using Instagram for better purposes now, to stay connected with those I care about and to laugh.
Sadly, studies have shown that the more adolescents use social media, the more likely they are to show symptoms of depression or anxiety. Whether or not your symptoms may be this extreme, you should still be cautious of how much time you are spending online. For me, simply changing my purpose behind why I was using it helped to fix the anxiety of not being perfect enough compared to everyone else. Maybe this same technique will work for you, maybe it won’t. But it’s worth a shot.
The next time you’re scrolling through your social media, ask yourself, what is the purpose behind me looking at this? How is it making me feel? Be honest with yourself. If you don’t like your answers then make those adjustments of changing who you follow or how much time you spend on it.
Because at the end of the day, our mental health should be our biggest priority. So do yourself a favor, and think before you scroll.
I totally agree with your assessment about the negative impacts of social media and instagram in particular. When people post on instagram, they typically post the best versions of themselves; that means their biggest accomplishments, their best outfits, and their greatest adventures. This creates standards that are impossible to obtain and makes instagram a fantasy world that is a complete misrepresentation of reality.
Like yourself, I was kind of addicted to instagram as well, and I actually deleted the app off my phone because I would get too distracted by it. It was interesting to hear your perspective about body image because I didn’t realize the extent to which it could affect you (it’s going to be okay — you’ll marry a blonde guy and have blonde kids :P). From the male point of view it’s a similar phenomenon. The American Psychiatric Association recently recognized muscular dysmorphia (colloquially known as bigorexia) as a mental disorder. It mostly affects men and involves someone obsessing over their muscularity, believing they are always too skinny. It’s onset likely has an association with the rise of social media, especially with more and more fitness blogs/accounts.
Overall, I think your analysis of the impacts of social media is very accurate and I love your message!
ahhh I LOVE Jameela Jamil!! What a badass lady. As much as we as users of social media are responsible for our own content moderation and not letting ourselves fall into the trap of comparison, it’s also important for influencers to take the lead and make an effort to be genuine and real in their posts.
I love this topic and I totally agree with what you are saying! It is so true how celebrities often only show themselves in a photoshopped light. I did a project last year about beauty and another thing we talked about was skin lightening. Where magazines and social media constantly photoshop women to make them look like they have lighter skin. I think this is very stupid and only sends the message that you have to have light skin in order to be beautiful when that is definetly not true! It is very true that teenage girls often get their sense of beauty from online and when we are only surrounded by negative images and people trying to make themselves skinnier because it is “more beautiful” our self esteem often lowers. I love how you decided to make a conscious decision to start following more body positive/postive pages on Instagram because I think surrounding ourselves with positive vibes will greatly improve how we see ourselves.
Emily, I think as the reach and popularity of social media grows, this topic is only becoming more important. Especially due to the fact that kids are now getting on social media very young, leading them to be exposed to unhealthy ideals before they have even hit puberty (which in my opinion is a horrible time to be on social media since your body is going through so many changes)… I also found myself in a similar position as you. I was following so many accounts or people that just made me think about myself in a negative light. When you are only seeing bits and pieces of these people’s lives, it is hard to understand that they are just that- bits and pieces. I’m not sure if you had a similar experience but once I was able to understand this, I also became more comfortable with what I posted. I was not putting hours into getting the right filter and perfecting my caption, I started posting what I wanted when I wanted.
This is such a good blog. Your reasoning is so clear and it makes a lot of sense. I’ve always hated social media, to the point where I deleted it for almost six months at the beginning of this year. But I realized after that point that I didn’t feel as connected to my friends and felt left out of the whole thing. Sadly, social media is a sort of necessity at the moment for me, but this blog completely changed my perspective. It’s not that I need to delete social media altogether, I just need to change how I am using it. I shouldn’t be following a bunch of celebrities that I don’t really care about and that will just make me feel bad about myself. There’s no point to it. Next time I see something like that on my feed, I will definitely be unfollowing that account.