What I learned from an Instagram burnout and a 3-month break
By: M.K. Anand
Tags: Burnout, Social Media, Instagram, Authenticity, Mental Health

Three months ago I was affected by an issue faced knowingly or unknowingly by anyone who is on social media: A full-on Instagram burnout. I did a social experiment on myself and it might prove useful for those navigating mental health in an Insta-world because let’s be real, this is inevitable.

The beginning of the end

Its been 3 months since I’ve posted anything on Instagram. A few months ago I was gallivanting across India posting pictures of gorgeous beaches, iconic temples and giving people glimpses into my family’s life. However, things got chaotic and busy with family (as they do) and I found myself obsessing over capturing the good times.As I was going through my day, I honestly I felt as if there was a voice in my head that would keep asking, Would this look good on Instagram? It was exhausting to the point that I began to question why I was doing this to myself. Sharing my life with my friends was supposed to be fun. It was supposed to capture memories that I can look on fondly years later when I was old and decrepit. It was the fuel for conversations with friends who follow me when I meet with them IRL (What else are they going to start a sentence with other than…I saw your story the other day!) So why did this make me miserable?

Hitting pause

I hit pause on the sharing and decided that I would give some thought to the whole process of posting. My friends on instagram didn’t seem to have this issue, (in fact they only seemed to be either deliriously happy or deeply contemplative in their posts) so I thought I would observe them. Maybe their peace with documenting their perfectly curated lives will rub off on me and things will go back to normal. Spoiler alert: They didn’t.

In fact it made things worse. Watching my friends on Instagram from the sidelines felt like a bizarre episode of the Truman show where everyone was happy and things were perfect. It felt like everyone was falling over each other with a daily advertising pitch about how amazing their life is and how everyone should want their life. More that the fact that I knew none of their lives were as perfect as their stories show, I felt sad that somehow well meaning people were tricked into conforming to creating an ‘Envy Culture’: Somehow a majority of my friends posts seemed to reek of a distinct vibe of “You want what I have” and that seemed off-putting. Mind you, these are my friends who in real life are perfectly normal folk who have no problems sharing their myriad of issues and reasons why their lives are falling apart if I give them the time. So there was something about social media and Instagram in particular that was bringing out this side in them. It was time to find out if I was alone. Unsurprisingly, I was not.

I did some online research and there are truckloads of articles on why social media is making people miserable (https://time.com/4882372/social-media-facebook-instagram-unhappy/ and https://newrepublic.com/article/123367/it-possible-be-happy-instagram for e.g.). It was great to know that other people were in the same boat as me, but as an engineer, I only cared about one thing: What do I do about this?

Solutions

The obvious next step was to delete all social media accounts, pack up for the cave in the Himalayas and say goodbye to the world. But flights were expensive so I fell on a Plan B: Contemplation about what I actually enjoyed on Instagram and maximizing what gave me joy. Here are the top three strategies I found gave me joy on Instagram again.

1. Identify the happy place: Amongst all the things on my feed that made me sad, there were things that made me smile, hope and gave me energy. I zeroed in on what the common elements of these things were. For me, there were things that were genuinely funny and people trying to tell a story (warts and all) from an authentic space of sharing rather than advertising their ability to overcome some trauma or a story about how incredible their life is. Everything else drained me and this revelation gave me hope for a brighter Insta-future.

2.Purge that follow list: Gaining some control on who appears on my feed and my stories was deeply cathartic. For years I hadn’t touched my follow list for fear of offending someone or starting beef. The awareness that my mental sanity comes first and anything not making me happy deserved to go took time. But when it felt right, the process of dropping hundreds of people I followed felt freeing. I could now choose what I would see on my stories and feed (other than ads of Chinese denim jackets that Instagram thinks I would love) and it was a breath of fresh air. No longer was I subjected to a never ending litany of the perfect beach shots, the annoying cafe froth art, the over saturated raw vegan bowl shots, the obviously staged yoga on rocks, and the obligatory sunset silhouettes with coffee mug worthy captions, some of which I have guilty of in the past myself.

3. Create, don’t consume: I reached into deep wisdom from ancient times (courtesy Master yogi Sri Sri Ravi Shankar) to find that consumption will never satisfy and the antidote is to create. When I unplugged from Instagram I spent more time making music, creating workshops and making short docs. All this made much more of an impact in my life than spending every event of note curating the experience perfectly to make my friends jealous and want my life. As I make my re-entry into the world of social media, I will take note of this phenomenon and spend more time making the kind of content that makes me happy: funny things and stories of depth and authenticity.

The obvious question is, why don’t I quit social media altogether? If these steps hadn’t worked, I would have. However, to find a middle ground in this complex world was gratifying. I can now spend time consuming updates from select friends that I really enjoy and that feels like a good thing. I have my fellow denizens of the internet to thank for sharing their input in helping me navigate this mess so I decided to pen my thoughts on this to add to the collection of thoughts to share on where else? Instagram. Follow me @m.k.anand if you’d like but honestly, I probably won’t follow back and thats a good thing.