Sunday, June 29th, 2025

I told Instagram that we need to see other people…

Reasons why I’m quiet-quitting the app,

and why the answer might not be a different social media.

The year was 2014. Summer, to be specific. I was late to the party, as per usual when it comes to technology and social media. But reluctantly, I bid farewell to my battered Blackberry and upgraded to the new iPhone of the time. And with it, Instagram.

I still remember my first post. An overhead shot of my eggs benedict diner breakfast. My still good friend Milena commented, “Instagram just got a whole lot better”. That makes me smile to this day. 21 likes and 2 comments- I had arrived.

And I was excited! Photography had always been a hobby of mine and now it was in a bigger way. A daily way. I uploaded photos during the breaks I was afforded from my soul-sucking retail job and it nourished me. This outlet of expression was THE source of my passion, so much so that it landed me my first professional photography job. I am pleased to say that from there, the quality of my posts improved substantially. And still, I like to think that I retained the very vibe that I had started my Instagram account with- the practice of recognizing the romance that can exist every single day. It is still the quality that clients admire in my work, 11 years later.

Instagram quickly became cemented in our daily lives and we can all track the growth and evolution from there. Single-photo posts gave way to elaborate carousels. Carousels gave way to quick, enticing reels. Stories became more consumable (and more fleeting) than both. TikTok became a competitor, inadvertently driving these changes and somewhere along the way, it all got out of hand. Pun intended.

In all of my sharing, it was always my relationships that garnered the most attention. My boyfriend of the time and my penchant for romantic love far eclipsed the posts where I announced both my business and my blog. Personally, I was prouder of the latter. I continued posting photography and original writing pieces near and dear to my heart, all the while knowing that the day I announced an engagement, wedding or positive pregnancy test, I would be awarded with the most likes of my entire life.

Similarly today, my followers are more excited when I post about getting sent free books, than when I post about said books. I worked very hard on a personal project for my small and romantic book club and the response was *crickets* compared to the PR package I got sent the next day. My selfies racked up a level of attention that I wish my blog got. Where had I gone wrong? When had I lost course? Or was I still on course, but in an entirely new landscape?

I sat down to lunch with a friend after a five-week long trip to see my boyfriend in Victoria. She asked me how it was, before quickly correcting herself to say, “Well, I followed along with your stories on Instagram, so I actually saw most of it”. There it is. The very shift summed up in one innocuous comment. It is not validation I seek from social media, but connection. And we have used this app as a stand-in for that connection, replacing checking in with watching stories. Replacing a phone call with a like on a post. And replacing the practice of deep intimacy with remaining pleasantly on the surface.

The aim of social media has instead turned towards the dark underworld of consumerism. Glittery and fleeting and addicting in its delicious fleetingness. Link please! Come with me to try the new! Watch me open this box of free! Shop my Amazon store front. Here’s what I eat in a day. Trending audio. Going viral. 5 red flags and 5 green flags and 3 tips for early dating and 6 ways to get over a break up. Like and subscribe for part two! Overstimulated. Oversaturated. Burnout.

I don’t blame Instagram. We are living in a time of ripe capitalism and realistically it was only a matter of time before an eggs benedict photo-sharing app became an arena for profit. And those who know how to play the game are finding immense, deserved success. But what about those who don’t and perhaps, don’t want to? I was increasingly unhappy on the app, both posting and scrolling, and at that point, I really did begin to blame myself. Instagram wasn’t at fault here. I had simply overstayed my welcome.

Boundaries in place, I moved the app away from its familiar place on my home screen. How many times had I opened it out of habit instead of desire? But I wasn’t going to delete it. At its best, Instagram is a tool and my page does contain years of photography posts towards a sort of online portfolio. At its worst, my relationship with Instagram had become toxic and I was consistently over-investing without a meaningful return. And now, I could spend all of that extra energy towards the search for community elsewhere.

The question looming and hovering just out of reach is where. I will not be running to more of the same capitalist chaos over on TikTok. Substack features photography and writing (my two loves), but it too is a form of social media that involves followers and likes. I do want to explore it more. Still, the goal remains to connect and I don’t want to keep searching online for something we can find in the living and breathing reality of being human. Do we keep forgetting this? The more people invest in AI instead of the downright miraculous human brain we have in each of our skulls. The more we invest in our online world instead of our real one. Why are we so willing to offload these unique skills of being a human being, like imagination? Empathy? Curiosity? Could it be because we are all exhausted?

My friend Milena, the same friend who was the very first comment of my Instagram, left the app a few months ago. When I praise her, she giggles and reminds me that she personally replaced it with Reddit. But in our conversation about this, she raised a valid concern that she would be left out of people’s lives. She was afraid that she would miss the life updates, the goings-on. We now try our best to text each other photos- she even sent me an entire recap of the recent travels she went on. We not so jokingly mused about the idea of a friendship newsletter. She is also a proud member of my small and romantic book club.

I am not sure what the future holds. I do have some recent work that I am proud of- a friend’s rose-lipped baby, another friend’s joyful wedding day. I’d like both to be added to the working portfolio that is my Instagram page. But the everyday needs to change. The romance belongs elsewhere. And while this question lingers in the air, the investment in my day-to-day life remains lovingly unchanged. Last weekend, I enjoyed the eggs benedict at Bonjour Brioche on Queen East, the charming French bistro with the blue flowered tablecloths and yellow walls. I took a photo of my plate in the table by the window where the lighting was just right. And I smiled because I liked this photo and after 11 years, capturing this wonderfully simple moment remains my passion. Only this time I didn’t press share. I let instagram remain unopened, relegated to the folder of neglected apps. And my real life just got a whole lot better.