On leaving Instagram

The time has come.

It has been a while coming, and now I feel ready.

Over the last few weeks I have come to realise how much Instagram is just a place to fuel anxiety and waste precious time.

It started when I decided to use an app to stop myself checking my phone so many times a day. The app is called ScreenZen. I put a limit on Instagram of three visits a day, 20 mins in total. As the days went past I realised that I no longer felt the strong pull either to post or to check my posts. I would think about posting a photo, and then realise that it was not going to achieve anything useful other than feed the part of my brain that seeks likes. That addictive dopamine hit. Yes, I saw a beautiful tree in the woods. No, I don't need to tell everyone about it. I don’t even need to photograph it; I can just enjoy it.

Alongside this reduction in phone pick ups I have been meditating daily with the book and linked audio files  ‘Finding peace in a frantic world’.

15 to 20 minutes daily over the past 8 weeks has been transformative. I have done meditation courses before, and now realise that I need to do it every day, regardless of my mental state, to maintain a feeling of calm and reduced anxiety.


The time that I was spending on IG is now replaced with meditation and learning to draw. I enrolled at City Lit Drawing 1 course for 6 weeks, and found myself amongst a bunch of seriously lovely people, all of different abilities, and all wishing to learn to draw better. One woman described her reason for attending as  ‘to escape my relationship’. Her attendance was erratic, and yet she is the one who has kept the group going after the course ended. Last Sunday I found myself trying to draw a bust of a handsome Roman in the company of my fellow ex-course pupils in a quiet corner of the V&A museum. It didn’t go well as a drawing, but it made me even more determined to keep practising and improving.

Drawing in itself is a meditative process, a different one from walking with my camera, but just as calming (most of the time!). I have time enough for both, and for that I am very grateful. 

So what will happen if I switch off from my 1500 followers? 
Will I fall into an artistic abyss?
I no longer believe so. 

Recently I have spent more time on Instagram reporting that I don’t like the adverts being shown to me in increasing numbers, and less time actually engaging in a useful way. I don’t wish to see ads about bunions, pelvic floor exercises or shoes. They are distracting and irrelevant. They appear in ever increasing numbers. They leave me feeling irritated. 
 
I rarely, if ever, make a sale as a result of one of my posts, so my plan is to work hard at keeping my website and newsletter as my main way of reporting what I am up to. My real friends and supporters will still be in touch through real-life meetings, my newsletters and my blog. The other thousand or so will probably not even notice my absence.

I am not an artist because I wish to make money.

I am an artist because it is what feeds my soul.

Just adding the ScreeZen app to my phone has been a revelation in how addictive Instagram is, and how little I miss it now that I am spending much less time on it. Having just read The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt  about the impact of smart phones on young people’s mental health, I feel even more strongly that as adults, we have a duty to set a good example to the young people in our lives. My grandson (10) is currently reading The Amazing Generation by Jonathan Haidt and Catherine Price on how to have fun in a screen free world. His comments have resonated strongly as he observes teenagers and even toddlers glued to phones, missing all that is going on around them. We spent time on a bus this week looking for 'the most interesting characters'. An elderly Asian lady in a large floppy hat carrying a shocking pink mallet caught our eye and left us imagining all sorts of possibilities for what she might be up to. 

I owe it to him and to myself. 

So I am going to go cold turkey, and remove the app from my phone.

I will still be found here on my website and blog.

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