How to use Instagram responsibly

I’ve always been worried about the harm of social media (specially Instagram) to my life. In the middle of 2020 I decided to deactivate my Instagram account as it was taking time and energy from me. The experiment was great, and I was able to recover my time and energy. Everything was going great, but I missed the contact with some friends that I used to talk to via Instagram. If you ever had an Instagram account, you can agree with me that it’s a great tool for keeping in touch with friends, as it provides ways to interact with them and see how they are doing.

Despite my happiness living Instagram-free, the idea of going back to it crossed my mind, so I decided to set a time limit and activate the account again. Long story short, after a few weeks I started to surpass the limit frequently. After realizing that, I through of quitting Instagram again, but that wasn’t the solution, it was just a way to avoid the problem.

A few weeks later, I came up with (what I believe) is the final solution. The reason behind why I need Instagram is that I’m not very good at keeping up with friends. It’s true that social media isn’t the most meaningful way to cultivate friendships, but it can help you keep in touch with people you are less close to.

Now, with that objective in mind, I started by cleaning up the people I follow and my followers to leave only the people I care about. Also, I changed my account to private, so I can control the people that follow me.

I realized that Instagram is like your friend’s news, you can see their stories and posts to keep you updated on how your friends are doing. Now, every morning, I open Instagram on the computer, reply all DMs, view some stories and then close Instagram and go on with my life.

If you feel like you’re spending too much time on Instagram and you want to do something about it, I’ll challenge you to try my method and share with me your results. In the end, Instagram is supposed to be a tool that helps you connect with your friends, and I believe that my method is good to achieve this purpose.

Thanks for reading.


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