My Complicated Breakup with Instagram’s White Noise: An Essay by Brenna Hagan

Graphic by Claire Evans

I remember the first time social media upset me. I was 10 years old. The post was on Facebook — a photo of two of my closest friends in clay masks and robes at a sleepover without me. My mother and I were watching a movie together when I clicked on the photo. I don’t remember what happened after, but I can’t forget the feeling of inadequacy that stuck with me throughout the night. In other words, I felt painfully embarrassed to be at home with my mother on a Saturday night while my friends, who hadn’t invited me to their hangout, were undoubtedly having a better time than I was.

This experience fits cleanly into the fear of missing out (FOMO) phenomenon that social media usage can cause. Though when I recall this memory, it is less the feeling of jealousy I remember, but rather a sense of aggravation that I had to come across the post in the first place. What I mean to say is that before that moment, what others were doing — or the very fact that they were doing things I was not included in — never took up space in my mind.

 I found my biggest issue with social media, and the prime reason I recently decided to retire my own Instagram account, was my inability to exist without the constant confirmation that people were doing other things. Simply, social media became a deafening white noise that, after over a decade of being online, I had to learn to live without.

Many millennials and “Zoomers,” like myself, seem to be aware of and yet apathetic about the amount of time we spend online. Before I made a conscious effort to lessen the time I spent on my phone, I was consistently struck with a pang of nausea upon receiving the weekly “Screen Time” notification on my iPhone. Sometimes, I left the notification unopened, too embarrassed to come to terms with how long I’d sat scrolling. When I did open it, I allowed myself to be disappointed for a few moments and then proceeded with those same habits the next week. Being chronically online seemed to be less of an addiction and more a facet of contemporary life.

It became clear to me that the time I spent on social media — which, for me, mainly encompassed scrolling on Instagram — was during the “cracks” in my day. For example, while waiting for the shower to heat up in the morning, I’d tap through my followers’ stories. When arriving a few minutes early to work, I’d reply to comments on my posts. Other times, I’d scroll while standing in line at the pharmacy to pick up my prescription or waiting for the gas tank to fill up or eating breakfast or going on a walk or sitting in traffic or preheating the oven or waiting for drinks at the bar — the list goes on. I was always on my phone. For me, social media was an unconscious habit that I had picked up to avoid doing nothing.

Though not taking up much time out of my day, social media took up space in my mind — space to think and, most of all, space to simply be.

When I deleted my Instagram account at the beginning of 2022 as a New Year’s resolution to stop spending so much time on my phone, my average screen time did go down. However, the hours I gained back didn’t appear in chunks of time that I could be doing something else. I still stayed up past the time I wanted to sleep at night. I still rushed to throw together frozen meals from Trader Joe’s. Like the majority of people, I still wished for more hours in the day.

It may seem easy to take time off of social media. Instead of deleting my account at the beginning of January, I only deleted the app. This did not work. I began opening up a browser window on my phone and physically logging on to www.instagram.com when I needed my fix. It became obvious that I was spending as much time using my browser as I once did the app.  

This led me to delete both the app and my account. If I had no account to log in with, my problem would be solved. Deleting my account should have been a more dramatic affair. I’d had the same account since I was in seventh grade. This profile had gone through many phases over the years. You have to understand: I was a trend follower online, and I was good at it. I worked jobs in social media throughout college, planning content, editing photos and creating marketing campaigns. My profile, thus, had been an exemplary model of the same techniques I learned at work. I downloaded photo editing apps and brightened the white walls I stood in front of. I spent close to $100 on influencer-created photo preset packs to ensure my feed was “cohesive.” I used only emojis in my captions. I made the “location” element of my posts read things like “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” and “Good Vibes Avenue.” I set my profile to a professional account, which allows you to distinguish yourself as a “Nonprofit Organization,” “Public Figure,” or “Model,” among others. I chose the “Just For Fun” category.

My deleted profile did not represent someone still engaged in these trends. Most of the photos and phases of my life that I feared I’d miss upon deletion were already wiped from my profile. It was less a loss of my entire adolescence and more a loss of one of many presentations of myself.

At the time of deletion, my account had become “casual.” The “casual Instagram” trend hearkened back to social media’s origins: posting whatever you wanted whenever you wanted. I always found the hashtag #MakeInstagramCasualAgain somewhat counterintuitive and never used it to caption my own “casual posts.”

I did enjoy this trend, however. At this point in my time online, I was thoroughly exhausted and uninterested in maintaining a curated profile. Casual posting was the perfect way to express that you didn’t take social media too seriously. People posted photos of their breakfast, their pets, their blurry selfies and their favorite deep-cut memes. I did this as well and attempted to showcase through my posts that I could care less about how I came across online. Close to the deletion of my account, however, instead of acting like I didn’t care about what my Instagram looked like, I simply didn’t care about Instagram anymore.

This type of posting seemed more like white noise compared to any other online phase I’d lived through. Likewise, it was clear to me that casual Instagram was in and of itself another purposeful performance and presentation. It seemed that behind every blurred selfie, grainy landscape photo or zoomed-in outfit detail was someone hoping the post would come off as effortless — chill and removed from intense trends of the past. 

I want to be very clear that I didn’t delete my account to become more productive. As much as business podcasters and “girlbosses” online love to force productivity on the masses, it’s OK not to be doing, seeing or posting something. My goal with spending less time online and on my phone was not so I could fill those hours going to workout classes or journaling. I simply wanted to turn off the white noise and tune into myself — to figure out who I was without the voice in the back of my head worrying about how others saw me. Without the pressure to perform, who was I?  

Like many people of the digital generation (or outside of it), I find it hard to be in silence. I mean this to say that a world without Instagram functionally introduced me to a world of quiet and unknowingness. I physically had to ask my friends what they had been up to without seeing their lives online. I no longer tapped through the entire daily routine, from 6 a.m. to 11 p.m., of the influencers I followed. I no longer saw people from college I’d lost touch with getting engaged or moving in together. I no longer had to read over-dramatic captions about someone’s health and fitness journey. I no longer had to see what everyone “ate in a day” or what their new “workout routine” looked like. I was in control — for the first time in a long time — over what I was seeing and who I was keeping up with.

I say all of this while knowing that I’ll never really leave social media. I can’t stop watching YouTube drama videos. I still look over my friend’s shoulders as they scroll through their feed. However, my departure from Instagram proved that there are better uses for my energy. I feel as though I’ve been given back a bit of my brain to put it toward whatever I want. I no longer feel like I am snoozing to the white noise of Instagram. I might still be a bit lazy, but at least I’m awake.