Instagram is dead to me! I had been weaning myself off of Instagram for the past few years it seems, trying to quit and now I’m finally over it.
I’ve not looked back, although I did have a brief slip up in Summer 2023 where I thought it was a good idea to use to promote my blog since Twitter became an even worse dumpster fire than before when Elon Musk first too over. Big mistake! I ended up quitting all social media again.
There was some disturbing info that came out of the whistleblower report in 2021 which was pages long, but here’s the gist:
One of the Facebook internal studies that you found talks about how Instagram harms teenage girls. One study says 13.5% of teen girls say Instagram makes thoughts of suicide worse; 17% of teen girls say Instagram makes eating disorders worse.
– Scott Pelley speaking with Frances Hughes on CBSNEWS
“Facebook has realized that if they change the algorithm to be safer, people will spend less time on the site, they’ll click on less ads, they’ll make less money,”
– Frances Haugen on CBS (video from 60 minutes Twitter)
This is not something that I want to be part of and so my blog is no longer on these platforms (Facebook or Instagram) and I will try to avoid Zuck’s future Metaverse projects. Soon after this interview Facebook changed their main company brand to Meta. 🙄
I used to naively think I had to be on Instagram to stay relevant or be available to blog opportunities,
but the truth is
I’ve have more collaboration emails come up from brands looking at my blog than a few squares on an app. 🙏🏻
As a social media manager/digital marketer I obviously won’t be able to leave the accounts I manage for work but this is the least I can do for my own wellbeing and mental health.
Let’s discuss in the comments. How is your relationship with Instagram and Facebook?