Why I Deleted All of My Instagram Posts

If I had to choose my favorite social media site—besides Pinterest, which I don’t quite consider social media, but couldn’t live without—it’d be Instagram.

I’m practically addicted. Because I like to scrapbook, I take pictures all the time, preserving every memory. I love Instagram because it’s like a digital scrapbook.

Over a period of four-ish years, I made 426 posts on Instagram. I shared photos of birthdays, dates, holidays... everything. I experimented with color schemes for a while, only posting photos with certain colors in them. I played around with symmetry, balancing my feed with patterns of people or drinks.

Then, a few months ago, I decided to delete them. All of my 426 posts.

It was tedious. I didn't want to pay for an app to delete them, so I used free trials from multiple apps—deleting about 25 posts at a time. When I ran out of apps to try, I did it manually. I was determined to wipe my feed, clean slate.

It seems like a crazy thing to do, I know.

But I was sick of it. What had started out as a fun, creative outlet for sharing photos—that digital scrapbook—had become something that stressed me out.

Is my feed symmetrical enough? Can I share ANOTHER selfie? Am I posting too many photos of food and drinks? Will anyone notice if I delete this picture and post this one instead?

I started to worry about what I was posting, how much I was posting, how often I was posting. It became an obsession, something that was causing a significant amount of anxiety in my life. The stress made me feel worse, because I knew how silly it was to get so worked up over Instagram (it made me feel like I was in an episode of Black Mirror).

I didn’t feel happy when I looked at my posts. It wasn’t like looking at a scrapbook; I didn’t look at the photos and reminisce. The memories were happy, but the way I’d presented them had become overwhelming.

Every photo was saved on my laptop, some even decorating the walls of my dorm. Since I wouldn’t lose any of those photos, I felt good about deleting them.

When my Instagram account was blank, cleared of all photos, I felt a sense of relief.

I felt like the ridiculous hold Instagram had on me was gone. I was free to reinvent my feed, and myself. I had been so concerned with aesthetic that I stopped sharing photos of the people who made me happy and the places that I loved.

I was always comparing my feed with others’ stuff. They look like they’re having fun—do I? I stopped posting things I wanted to post, and started posting things to craft the image of a “perfect” life. I was trying to give the illusion that I was living my best life, when I didn’t feel that way at all; in fact, the amount of time I was spending on Instagram was making me feel even worse.

Social media is always something I’ve struggled with. I love it, but it’s so addicting and demanding that I often find myself stepping away for a few days to refocus on my real life, not the life I’m posting. It’s easy to feel inadequate when you see only the good parts of someone’s life—the parts they share.

When I deleted all of my posts, I rid myself of the compulsive need to build towards an aesthetic. Now if I’m not active for a few days, or I want to take a week away from Instagram and other social media apps, I don’t feel like I’m missing out. Because I’m sharing things that make me happy, instead of photos geared towards getting likes or maintaining an image, Instagram feels like a digital scrapbook again.

Something meant to be fun had become addicting, so I took control and made it fun again. Deleting all 426 Instagram posts was one of the best things I could do for my mental health. Now I enjoy it again!