Questioning Instagram
Should I stay or should I go?
Ode to Instagram… (new poem ~ press play to listen)
Instagram oh Instagram
My relationship with Instagram, and Meta as their parent company, has been up and down over the years. There are many things I love about this international, connective, co-creative place in the cloud, but there are also a lot of things that make tapping in feel really quite toxic to me.
I’ve tried all sorts of things to manage the good, the bad and the ugly, such as scheduling content, taking the app off my home screen, having timers and lots of other things in-between. Recently in sessions with clients, where I’ve been mapping out strategies and systems for their social media, I have been updating what it takes to succeed on the platform, how this has changed over the past few years, let alone the past decade, and noticing how that feels for me.
This has me considering my personal and professional use of IG and the time, energy and resources I want to invest into it. Each and everyone of us is different; what we want to achieve in life, what we have going on in our lives at any given time and what success looks like for us. How we use social media will reflect this - it is not a one solution fits all space, which is something I am a HUGE fan of!
Group think, digital culture and big tech itself results in a lot of advice saying how we should show up on and use social media or do business even. Yet the algorithms are personal, subjective and unique just like LIFE and this fact has always been of fascination to me. None of us are having the same experience of social media. This should give us more power to determine how we choose to use it with sovereignty.
It’s not about being visible or not, or communicating online or not, it’s questioning where to be visible, what those environments look like, what they feel like, and what the culture is, the environment, the rhythm and the frequency of that space…
I’m asking myself what IG does for me and how it feels to me in 2024, what it does for my community, as well as what it is doing to our energy and sanity…
This week I shared how I was sitting in the inquiry of what my future on Instagram looks like, and it was interesting to hear how many of you are feeling the same.
I must admit that particularly as a social media consultant and coach, it is scary to think about not using it anymore. It’s a platform that I have loved, where I have had a lot of success with clients and a place where I connect, scroll and share regularly.
I will write into this more over the coming months as I figure things out. I thought I would start by writing down some of the ‘reasons I want to go and the reasons I want to stay’ and share these with you…
Reasons I want to go *in no particular order…
Adverts / suggested posts every 3 posts.
Getting ads for things you just talked / thought about.
Shaming, blaming and cancel culture amongst the collective.
Gamification and addictive / persuasive design particularly for creators.
How I habitually pick up, tap in, get lost in a scroll - what I will do with that time/ creativity I get back from that.
Popcorn brain & reduced attention span / addiction to dopamine.
Data collection and use of that in surveillance capitalism - ‘we are the product.’
Censorship, the blatant propaganda & the less obvious behaviour manipulation.
Fake news + misinformation is rampant & we haven’t even fully got going on all the Ai stuff yet!!
Clone accounts, hacked accounts, fake accounts and catfishing.
Unsolicited approaches in my inbox, the constant being sold to… Oh and all the sex bots on Stories.
Terrible / non existent customer service then paying for it with Verification.
No trust in the Zuck, Meta’s leadership and their visions for the Metaverse.
No trust in follower numbers & what they actually mean - so many are bought alongside a pay to play environment re business & what that means more widely.
Intellectual property & licensing issues when putting content on the platform.
How it has me comparing myself to others & triggered both consciously and unconsciously whenever I tap in.
Being offered unsolicited advice and getting ‘hooked in’ does my nut in.
Seeing bad news, wars & collective traumas without warning or signposting does affect my nervous system and emotional body.
Short form content + TikTok copycat = busy digital City.
Sense of community & connection is not as strong due to all of the above.
Reasons I want to stay *in no particular order…
Memes, astrology and seeing the cool stuff people create / share.
Connecting with friends, colleagues, connected community far and wide and the audience I have built over past 5 years.
Creating multi-media content & the tools they provide for this.
Access to audience & reaching new people.
Sharing insights, inspo and creating awareness around my body of work.
Being able to connect with people I like and admire.
Sending / receiving memes with/from besties.
Researching, learning and watching for patterns and possibilities.
Fun stuff in discoverability eg. Nala doing mouth snappies @lifelikecharlie
@houseinhabit Stories
Notice that I had twice as many reasons to go, than to stay, with many of the professional reasons to stay being possible on other platforms more peacefully… 👀
Please let me know in the comments how you are feeling about Instagram, which of my reasons to go, or stay you most resonate with, or any of your own that I didn’t list here, I’d love to know!
If you enjoy, get value and implement things from what I share, please consider upgrading to paid. By giving £3.50 a month or £25 a year to support my work, it will collectively help towards the cost of living here on planet Earth. Thank you for the consideration / contribution. 🙏🏽 You can also gift subscriptions to friends for their birthday, or for my birthday, it is Pisces season, and share the love! 🐬
Thanks so much for sharing this Katie. Instagram is a completely different beast here in 2024 than it was when I signed up over ten years ago and it's absolutely wild there now. What you said about seeing wars and trauma with no warning has been tough for me too. In a ten second scroll you can see war footage, a pick a card that you "must watch because it's a message from your guides right now", people murdered, a make-up tutorial, someone sharing their heavy trauma, an ad for wrinkle cream, it's playing with our heads and screwing our nervous systems in so many ways. Like you I have many reasons to stay and many to go. At the moment I am focusing more on posting and creating than scrolling, which also sadly means less connection with the accounts I do really love. I try not to have my phone near and try to time box, all the strategies. Sometimes they really help, other days I notice when I'm already tired or burned out I am so much more susceptible to the scroll, which is of course, the worst time to do it. I don't have any answers really, I just wanted to say thanks for being so honest about where you are on your journey.
I love this Katie. I recall attending one of your workshops a few years back. I am currently exploring a few things about social media. Firstly, what do I want to share with folks that will be of value to them. Secondly, what platforms do I really wish to engage in. The one thing we forget about social media is that it is meant to be 'social' - more about connection with others and less about, 'hey, buy from me'. Sometimes it is hard to find the balance and oh so easy to slip into the 'oh my god I need to get my work out there and be seen.' Loving your posts and gentle reminder of refocusing on what matters.