Instagram Trapped My Happiness
Nowadays, it’s all about you and your phone. Your phone holds maybe more secrets than your closest friend has ever known. Inside your phone, there are so many things you can find.
Instagram is one of them. Instagram snatches people’s hearts because it works like Facebook, but all you can see are pictures. Instagram also could be the window of your whole life, as you share what you do or like on that platform. People usually use Instagram to share their happiness by uploading their favorite photos—or just to kill their boredom.
When you decide to make an Instagram account, you just follow your friends or family at first. Then you quickly become addicted. You begin to follow your peers in one of your classes, although you don’t know them. Slowly, you start to know anything that happens to your following. One time, it’s okay. The second time, umm, alright. The third time, … well … okay. You keep telling yourself it’s okay until you cannot stand what other people post on Instagram.
I’ve been away from my Instagram account for a few weeks. That’s a big deal for me because I always checked my phone after I woke up until I went to sleep again. Instagram had become one of my friends, and eventually, my enemy. I have to remind you that I’m not a well-known person with an astonishing feed or many followers. I’m just an average girl who follows what is trending right now. I always feel anxious if I don’t post my obligatory Insta stories, or just looking at other people’s stories and posts. Then, eventually, that habit makes me different. I seldom find myself feeling happy after spending any amount of time on Instagram. I become easily envious of other people’s lives. One time, my friend posted pictures from her vacation with her boyfriend, and I hated them so much because I couldn’t do the same. Another time, I became extremely sad and felt alone just because of someone’s stories about how she had some fun with her friends, and I compared how I was looking at her stories while eating alone. It’s crazy, right?
It’s not healthy. I realized that I’m a sensitive person and I have to look for my own way to not feel like that. At first, I made several account besides my main account. They worked as my escape from my main account. But what for? I’m not even Selena Gomez or Chloe Moretz, who have millions of followers. One night, I finally decided to delete Instagram and take some time away from it. Guess what? It worked. The first two days were the hardest, but I figured out how to endure it—and I’ve been feeling happier than before. I spent more time on Medium, reading books and old fanfictions, watching Strikethrough on Vox, having serious conversations with my parents, going outside, and so on. For me, without Instagram, I feel more alive and liberated from the temptation to compare my life to what I see online. In essence, I decided to prioritize my happiness.
Some people may agree with this and some maybe not. We have to decide for ourselves whether we view Instagram as entertainment or as a scary monster. I have decided to be away from it until I don’t know when, because my happiness is my priority. How about you?
“There is no duty we so much underrate as the duty of being happy.” — Robert Louis Stevenson
