Should I delete Instagram? + changing your habits

Let’s talk about Instagram. As much as this post has been unbelievably hard to write, I want to be completely honest with you all today. I’ve always been pretty clear with how I feel about the app: I hate it. This has been the case ever since I created the account for my blog. I know a few of you feel like you’re in the same or similar boat, so this one is for you! A couple of months ago, I googled “should I delete Instagram?” and found nothing helpful. So today, I want to share with you why I dislike Instagram so much, why I nearly deleted the app (just to be clear, it’s still on the cards), and how I have tried to change my habits on the app to make for a much less stressful experience.

Why I hate Instagram

It’s hard to put a finger on the exact reasons why I dislike Instagram so much. I suppose it’s because of the pressure to be “successful”. Because of how easy it is to compare yourself to others. And how judgemental people can be. Of course, there’s also the fact that a lot of those perfect posts you see are fake and create unrealistic life expectations. Everyone knows that Instagram causes all sorts of mental health issues for people. Why do you think Instagram hides the number of likes on everyone’s posts (at least here in Australia)? But you don’t really think about it properly till you become one of those people.

From a blogger’s perspective, I don’t like Instagram because it’s almost impossible to grow your blog on. In fact, it’s practically a waste of time. Instagram actively discourages its users from leaving the app. I always wondered why I couldn’t put a link in a post or why you had to have 10,000 followers to have the swipe up feature in stories… It’s because they don’t want you to click links.

I’ve had this blog for about five months now, and I only have 34 link clicks from Instagram. A large portion of those are me, testing whether my links work. Compared with 294 link clicks to date from Facebook, and 38 link clicks from Pinterest in only 3 months, the traffic from Instagram is practically nothing. In fact, this month, Pinterest accounts for more than 3 TIMES my traffic than Instagram! Not to mention that there’s thousands of travel Instagram accounts out there. The niche is over-saturated. Realistically, I’m never going to make it big on the platform.

Should you delete Instagram? Here’s why I considered it:

I’ve had a personal account on Instagram for nearly 4 years, where I don’t care about followers or anything. I just look at and share cute animal photos! However, when I got Instagram for my blog, I started caring about how many followers I had and how many likes I got. Even though I knew deep down I would never make it big on the platform, I suddenly wanted to. I poured so much effort into growing my following: I joined follow loops and engagement groups. All that stress and all I got out of it was 1,000 inactive followers who don’t care about my content and 1,500 accounts that I had to follow, even if I didn’t care about them because they were a “ghost host” or broke the rules and un-followed me later. And did that help my actual blog at all? Nope. Of course not.

It got to the point where Instagram was wreaking havoc on my mental health. Keep in mind that this was happening while I was still in lockdown. I couldn’t work, I couldn’t volunteer, and I couldn’t see my friends. So with nothing else to focus on and stress over, I stressed over Instagram. I over-analysed everything, from how many followers I had, to who I was following, whether people were unfollowing me, to how many likes and comments and saves I got. I poured so much effort into growing my account that I forgot what I was really there for: just to share pretty pictures with my friends. And maybe a few other people that wanted to come along for the ride.

In the end, it took a friend to tell me “if you hate it that much, just stop”. So I did. I researched whether I should delete my Instagram. Found no answers. So I decided to write this blog post. Let me be that person for you. If you hate it that much, just stop. Or change something.

Why I haven’t deleted Instagram… YET

If you’re one of the few people that came here from Instagram (thanks, by the way!), you’ll know I didn’t delete my account in the end. There is a handful of people that I have met through this travel blogging journey who I have decided are worth staying for. Not that deleting the account is no longer on the cards. I’ve started following my favourite people from my personal account. But fundamentally, I love sharing my photos and experiences with others, so before taking the “be all end all” approach, I wanted to try and change my mindset instead.

Not convinced you should delete Instagram? Here’s how I’m trying to change my habits instead.

Over the last couple of months, I have been trying to change my Instagram habits to make my experience on the app better for myself. It’s difficult to completely turn around your mentality, and there are still things that I am working on. But on most days, I am feeling 100 times better about the app. I don’t stress about how much engagement I get anymore. I’m proud when I get one link click to my blog, rather than complaining about the fact that it’s only one person. And I only interact with the people who’s content I genuinely care about.

How to determine what needs to change

I have already mentioned that I have two accounts on Instagram: one for my blog, and my original personal account. I’ve had that personal account for about 4 years and I’ve always just posted what I liked on it. Way back at the start, I secretly hoped I might become Insta-famous one day but over time I just realised that chances are, I probably wouldn’t. And I wouldn’t necessarily want to. However, as I mentioned above, I managed to get sucked back into that mentality for my blog. So when I realised something had to change, I looked at how I thought and behaved on my personal account and compared it to the blog account. I made myself the table below, where I compared both accounts and basically highlighted the difference and what would have to change to make them the same.

Some things, I was already doing; namely, posting content that I love! However, there were other things that I was doing very badly at; for example, I was constantly comparing myself to others and carefully watching my follower count. Remember how I said I was still working on some of this stuff? I only added that last row about two weeks ago.

As you can see, these are all pretty basic things. Who doesn’t look at their post insights or their follower count every now and again? It becomes a problem when you obsess over it. Or get seriously upset when your engagement or follower count goes down. Realising it is the first step. Now it’s time to make some changes.

What habits can I change to improve my experience on Instagram?

You can see in the table above exactly what I decided to try and change about each aspect of Instagram. But I will summarise the main ones below with a bit more detail.

Follower Count

This is one I am still very much struggling with. Just this week, I snuck a glance at my follower count and got frustrated. I had been very consistent for a while but I suddenly slipped again! So I went through who I was following and unfollowed the unfollowers. Then I spent the rest of the day moping because I was mad at myself for caring!!!

Most of the time, I have two things that I do to prevent myself from noticing and stressing over my follower count. I’ve stopped looking at my profile page. Instead of swapping accounts from my profile page, I can do it from the home feed by holding the profile circle at the bottom and tapping my personal account. That way, I don’t have to see in big bold letters at the top of my profile how many or few followers I have. On the downside, when you press and hold the profile picture it still shows you your follower count. But with much smaller text, and if I’m fast enough, I can avoid noticing. I also use the Preview App to look at my feed. I’ve always used it to plan future posts, but now I can also use it to look over old posts if I want to.

On the downside, when you press and hold the profile picture, it still shows you how many followers you have. But with much smaller text, and if I’m fast enough, I can avoid noticing too much.

Who you’re following

I think who you’re following is really key to having a positive experience on Instagram. If you’re like me and do (or did) follow loops, you’ll no doubt be following hundreds if not thousands of people, all of whom have travel accounts like yours. It’s so easy to compare yourself to others, so the first change I made was to un-follow anyone I didn’t care about or who gave me unrealistic expectations of the Instagram experience.

This is going to make me sound bad because I un-followed about 300 people. A significant portion of those people were ghost hosts from travel loops who paid to have me as a follower. Do I feel bad? Kind of. Do I care? No. Realistically, I was just one number. I never engaged with them anyway. It’s not their loss, not really. From my perspective, that’s also 300 less people that I can compare myself to. Besides, if it’s what’s right for me (or for you), then you should just go for it, no matter how “bad” it might make you look.

Likes, comments and engagement

Stopping caring about likes was comparatively easy for me. I don’t know if its the case everywhere, but on all Australian Instagram accounts, the number of likes a post gets is hidden to all but the account owner. Even then, I have to click on my post insights if I want to see exactly how many likes I got, instead of just “@xxx and others”. For me, it was as simple as leaving all the engagement groups that I was a part of and reducing how frequently I looked at post insights. Eventually, I would like to not look at post insights at all, but I guess I’ll see how I go. I do like to try engage with people who engage with me and the easiest way for me to do that is to see who likes my posts!

Comments are a bit more difficult, given that I can still see how many comments someone gets and compare myself to them. However, I know that the people commenting on my feed are people that genuinely care about my content 90% of the time (because they’re my followers!) and that’s good enough for me.

How do I know if deleting Instagram is for me?

Let’s be real. If you’re reading this article, especially if you got here from googling “should I delete Instagram”, then deleting the app is probably a good choice for you. If you think you’ll struggle with the strategies I’ve listed above, or if you try them and just can’t shake your habits, then it’s definitely a good choice for you. Your mental health is 1000 times more important than what people think. And don’t forget, it’s not going to affect your blog too much (if you have one)! Start with a detox; delete the Instagram app or sign out of the account for a week. See how it makes you feel. You might realise you don’t miss it at all! This will be the next step for me if my techniques above don’t work. I’ll be sure to give you all an update if I get to that stage.

I hope this post has helped any of you considering whether you should delete Instagram. If you have had a similar experience to me, I would love to hear from you. It would mean a lot to hear that I’m not going through this alone! Similarly, please reach out if this post has helped you and if you think I can help in any other way. As much as I don’t want to be the only one feeling this way, I’m sure you don’t either! You can comment below, sign up to my email newsletter (also below), message me on social media (I’m on Facebook as well as Instagram) or put an entry in my contact form.

Interested in reading more of my blogging tips? You can find all my posts on this topic here. So far, I have covered starting a travel blog, social media for travel bloggers (part 2 coming next month) and planning and writing great blog posts!

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