“Goodbye, Instagram” … Two Years Later

22 Monday Aug 2022

Tags

Contentment, delete instagram, quit instagram, social media

I wanted to hop on here to commemorate the day that I ditched Instagram. And to reflect, once again, on what life is like without it–this time two years later instead of just two months.

I had my reasons for saying goodbye to the ‘gram:

The instant/constant nature of the beast
The time-sink
Low return on investment for blog traffic
Seeing a friend’s reasons for leaving gave me permission to hop off, too

You can read explanations of each of those points in my original post here.

[Aside: I’ve realized in further reflection that the politicization of everything is another reason I got off. But the explanation of that point would require an entire blog post in itself. I’ll save that for another day. Maybe.]

Lately I’ve felt a little twinge of nostalgia for those square pictures. I remember the reasons I was on there for about two years before I quit…

I wanted to drive some traffic to my blog
It was fun to see beautiful pictures of books, kids, planners, educational quotes, etc
It was fun to share those sometimes random, precious, and/or entertaining moments with others
It was easier to write an encouraging or thoughtful caption than to write and edit a blog post–so I was at least getting some ideas and inspiration out there more often

quit instagram two years later social media

So, does the potential for good outweigh the bad? Will I be giving it another go?

No.

Definitely not.

Those feelings of nostalgia aren’t necessarily bad, but they are misplaced. I want my emotional energy to be primarily directed to the people in my family, my church, my broader local community. I don’t need to build up more nostalgia for a social media platform. I need to invest in building up emotional ties where they really matter.

“Where your treasure is there your heart will be also.” Jesus is talking about the love of money vs. the love of God, but I think the principle applies just as well to how we spend our time and attention. What we care about we invest in, and what we invest in we care about.

The nostalgia isn’t a reason for getting back on. It’s yet another reason for staying away.

All of my original reasons for quitting Instagram are still valid. And in the two years I’ve been off, I am finding that I’m growing in several areas:

Contentment–It’s easier to enjoy the sometimes random, precious, and entertaining moments for what they are if I’m not wrestling with an urge to make them public. Not to mention, it’s a lot harder to compare yourself to air-brushed standards of parenting, beauty, organization, you-name-it if you aren’t looking at them. With that surface-level of discontentment stripped away, I’ve found deeper layers of it that needed to be dealt with. And I’m growing.
Focus–There are plenty of things vying for my attention. Having one less of them does, in fact, make a difference.
Detaching from social media in general–I’m still on Facebook, but not very often. I’m still on Scholé Sistership, but it has a limited Christian homeschool mom focus, few pictures, and is a uniquely edifying community.
Growing in self-control–I mentioned last time using the Freedom app to help limit time on social platforms. I don’t use the app any more. Practicing self-control (by the grace of God) and growing in renewed affections for doing what needs to be done have me in a place where I don’t need the training wheels anymore.
Growing in strength of will–Making decisions is easier when I’ve eliminated an entire category of potential decisions to make. I strengthen my will every time I exercise it in choosing to do the next right thing rather than scrolling a platform where “the next thing” is up to an algorithm. We train ourselves into habits, but our habits can also train us.

Even with some nostalgia, even though I still appreciate seeing new baby pics and other updates from friends on Facebook, I’m just less and less interested in social media in general. I’ve considered ditching it altogether. Maybe someday I will. I sure won’t be signing up for the Metaverse when it drops. No, thank you.

Please don’t mistake this for an anti-technology post. Here’s the deal. Technology is a blessing but it comes with risks, too. We each have to run our own cost-benefit analysis. Your particular situation may cause you to answer the social media question differently than I do. And that’s fine. Coming up with one rule for everyone isn’t the point.

The point is to wisely evaluate how we spend our time and attention, especially when it comes to apps that are designed to suck as much of both of them out of us as possible.

If you’ve been itching to get off of a social media platform and wonder if it’ll be alright, wonder if you can manage, wonder if it’s possible to live in the 21st century without it, let this post be a bit of encouragement to do what you need to do.

Yes, it will be ok.

There is life after Instagram. Real life. And it’s good. Don’t let peer pressure (or those “your friends will miss you” pre-programmed scripts) keep you from making a decision you know is right for you.

Two years later I’m still glad I ditched the ‘gram. No regrets, my friends. No regrets.

For more, see my original post [Real] Life After Instagram.

Titus 2 and the Dunbar Number: Social Limits and Priorities

24 Friday Sep 2021

Posted by Lauren Scott in Home and Family, Living Faith

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

Christian life, Christian Women, Home and Family, Intentional Living, motherhood, priorities, Relationships, Social Connections, social media, The Dunbar Number, Titus 2

I’ve been on a bit of a minimalist kick lately, decluttering my house, my closet, my recipes, my priorities, you name it. While I don’t necessarily hold to minimalism as a whole-life philosophy, I find that it does offer some necessary push-back to our modern tendencies to be “ever expanding,” whether that be in our possessions, resources, opportunities, or social connections.

On that last item, social connections, I recently read an article explaining the theory of what’s called the Dunbar Number. A British anthropologist named Robin Dunbar posited (after some research on primates and combing through human records) that the greatest number of meaningful connections any one person can hold at a given time is about 150.

Titus two dunbar number social connections family

I have to admit I had quite the confirmation bias response to this article, because not too long ago I was explaining to my husband that I have social limits, and I simply cannot keep up with all-the-people, and I certainly don’t have energy for continually adding to the number of all-the-people to whom I feel some measure of social obligation.

With interest and perhaps some of that confirmation bias running through my veins, I decided I’d see where my current number of connections stood. I pulled out my brain dump notebook and began to write down all of the people with whom I have some meaningful or working connection. I started with family. That easily reached over 30 people. Then it was long-standing friends. You know, the people you may or may not see each year but whom you are committed in some way to maintaining for the long haul: again, over 30. Neighbors came to about 20. Homeschool connections almost 30. Church connections (which is small right now because we’re still new at our local church): about 15. And then I listed those who are a bit more distant but still qualify under this idea of meaningful connection: 60 or more. If you just add up the rounded numbers I’ve listed, that makes 185, more than the Dunbar Number (150). No wonder I feel a bit overwhelmed and like I can’t add any more.

But guess what kinds of people I didn’t add to any of those lists of contacts? For the most part, I didn’t include online-only relationships. There are seven ladies who make the cut because they are part of an online stand-up/accountability group. Other than those ladies, every other person on the list has some real-life, meaningful or workable connection (or has had in the past and therefore they are on the list).

What this little exercise demonstrated for me was twofold: One, there isn’t really any room for me to build or even maintain relationships on social media or other online platforms. No wonder I feel a little overwhelmed trying to keep up. Two, even these connections that I wrote down are pushing the limit, and I need to prioritize.

Now, Dunbar’s theory itself has prioritization built in. He suggests that any one person can have only about 5 people in their inner circle—these are loved ones, your most trusted and closest kind of friends (large families can adjust this number accordingly, IMO). Next up are “good friends,” of which you can maintain about 15 (or just ten more than the 5 closest friends we already mentioned). There are about 50 that can be called “friends” in a meaningful way before our own capacity is stretched enough to make the term “friend” less meaningful (I’m looking at you, Facebook). And then the next jump is up to that limit of 150 meaningful contacts. Beyond that, the study claims we could have face-recognition of up to 1500 people–but not meaningful relationships. I can’t say I’ve taken the time to test the limits on that last one.

Now, all of this should be taken with a grain of salt. The Dunbar Number is a theory, not gospel nor scientific law. But it is interesting, isn’t it?

I’ve titled this article “Titus 2 and the Dunbar Number,” so it’s about time I brought this back around. As Christians, we know that the greatest commandments are to love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength and to love our neighbor as ourselves. And while Jesus insisted that anyone who we find in need of our help can be considered our neighbor (see the parable of the good Samaritan), in today’s times, we tend to be over-exposed to people and needs via the internet and social media, skewing our sense of responsibility away from our nearest neighbors and toward those far from us.

The impact here is both quantitative in that we’re compelled to give emotional energy toward more people than we have capacity for and qualitative in that we’re tempted to prioritize (at least in the moment) people far away from us, for whom we are not most responsible. The issue here isn’t that caring for people far away is bad (it’s good to be concerned for people in different places than we are), it’s just unnatural to have a constant reminder of them and to be pulled away from the people literally right in front of us or across the street. The combination of those quantitative and qualitative elements makes for a rather big challenge, especially if we take seriously the call to “love our neighbor.” We’re left asking Jesus for clarification, “Who is my neighbor?”

This is where Titus 2 comes in. Some people hate this passage because they see it as limiting women to the home, keeping them barefoot and pregnant, etc. But I think we can see it in a different light. Here it is for your consideration:

Older women likewise are to be reverent in their behavior, not malicious gossips nor enslaved to much wine, teaching what is good, so that they may encourage the young women to love their husbands, to love their children, to be sensible, pure, workers at home, kind, being subject to their own husbands, so that the word of God will not be dishonored.
Titus 2:3-5

If we are to love God and love people, the first place that we ought to practice that God-honoring people-love is within our own households. What Titus 2 (and a few other passages) implies to me is that this temptation to concern and even distract ourselves with people “out there” isn’t something only modern social media mavens have experienced. Even women in the first century needed the reminder that a love that isn’t fulfilling its duty at home first is a hypocritical love that can lead to the gospel being blasphemed, the good news being spoken of as if it’s bad.

Now before anyone throws stones because they think I’m promoting “the patriarchy,” let me be the first to say that this principle holds true for men as well. It’s why elders are supposed to be good managers of their own households before they are recognized as leaders in the church (1 Timothy 3:1-7, Titus 1:5-9). It’s why a man that doesn’t provide for his own is called “worse than an unbeliever” (1 Timothy 5:8). The call to prioritize the people right in front of us is universal. This responsibility to one’s own household is why singleness is, for some, an effective state to be in for the sake of ministry to others: because the man or woman who isn’t tied down has more time and energy to devote to the Lord, which may include serving others beyond the home in a way that the married person simply can’t (1 Corinthians 7:32-35). But that’s more the exception than the norm for believers. Most of us are called to marry and build families to the glory of God.

So the reminder in Titus 2 to love your husband and love your children and focus on the work that must be done to keep the home running well isn’t slavish or limiting. It’s a sane call to put first things first. The calling toward home and family doesn’t necessarily preclude other callings, but it does take precedence over them.

And, if you think about it, all of this makes sense in light of Dunbar’s thoughts on human social capacity. We each may vary in terms of our social capacity, and some of us may need to cut back while others may need to stretch themselves. But at the end of the day, we all have limits. And we all have to choose how we will use the limited resources we’ve been given.

How about you? Do you feel our modern connected world pulls your attention away from the folks that matter most to you?

We may not need to dump online community and resources altogether, but might it be helpful to imagine what our priorities would look like if those things didn’t exist. Join me for a thought experiment?

If the internet didn’t exist, what would you want your family life to look like? How might you prioritize your husband? Your children? If you are in a different stage of life: your roommate, parents or siblings, or extended family?

If the internet didn’t exist, what would you do to get to know your neighbors? To be a blessing to them?

If the internet didn’t exist, what would you do to get to know the people at your church better? How might you reach out to discover needs and meet them? In your church and your local community?

If the internet didn’t exist to make long distance relationships many-and-easy, who would you 100% want to keep in touch with–even if it meant more effort?

[Real] Life After Instagram

28 Wednesday Oct 2020

Posted by Lauren Scott in Living Faith

≈ 7 Comments

Tags

delete instagram, quit instagram, social media, time management

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On August 22, 2020 I finally did it. I deleted my account. I had only been on Instagram for two or three years, but it was long enough to feel pretty at home there–and long enough to have spent considerable time wondering whether it was worth keeping up.

Here are my reasons for quitting–as well as my reflections after a full two months without the ‘gram.

Why I Quit Instagram

I’ve had a love-hate relationship with social media ever since my then-friend-now-husband convinced me to join Facebook back in 2006.

That love-hate relationship (with Facebook, not my husband) extended to Instagram a few years ago when I decided that it looked like a less-cluttered and possibly more fun platform–and that it might help drive traffic to my blog.

It was fun. And I enjoyed the people I met there. But over time I found the positives didn’t outweigh the negatives. Here’s what finally led me to walk away.

REASON #1: The InstaNature of the Beast (and the Guilt Cycle)

There’s something written into the name “Instagram” (and thus into the platform itself) that creates a sense of urgency where it doesn’t really belong.

Cute moment with the kids during school… Ooo…I should share this!

Hike in the mountains… Ooo…I should snap a photo!

The sense of urgency interrupts real life, but then real life interrupts my attempts to craft a cute caption. When the post is finally made, guilt swoops in, nagging at me for the time spent when I really should have been all-there with my kids or thoroughly enjoying God’s creation or maybe even writing an actual article.

But then the guilt that comes from real life’s call for my attention gets pushed around by the guilt that the platform itself creates. When “instant” is in the name (and the algorithm), it’s hard not to feel like you are somehow failing if you don’t update frequently.

The only way to break this crazy Guilt Cycle is to recognize that I don’t owe Instagram my content, nor do I really owe anyone (and especially not strangers) a near-daily peak into the life of my family. That’s really absurd when you think about it.

REASON #2: The Time-Sink

Even at times when I wasn’t posting very often (which, let’s face it, I was never a super-frequent poster to begin with), there was still the draw of the feed: cute pictures of parenting or homeschool moments, inspirational quotes, updates from some of my favorite people (because I followed real friends on IG, too), and give-aways for things I actually wanted (and which I won on more than one occasion).

These things are lovely, but while they might seem like benign encouragements in my day, they more often than not were the bait to keep me scrolling when I really needed encouragement to get up, do my duty, and love my people.

This past summer I installed the Freedom app, which I have found very helpful.

Putting your social media use on a time budget may just reveal that you don’t have time for it at all.

When I put reasonable restrictions on social media, it became abundantly clear that there simply wasn’t time for creating those cute posts that seemed so necessary. Even when I tried a post-scheduling app, I simply I couldn’t keep up.

All I was left with was that oh-so-addictive scrolling. And it began to feel more and more empty, more and more like stealing time away from what really mattered, even as I had given myself less opportunity for it. My moments of Freedom opened my eyes to the fact that my life off-screen was very, very full. You might say that Instagram wasn’t helping my real-life bottom line, which leads me to the next point…

REASON #3: Low Return on Investment

My real-life bottom line wasn’t the only one that failed to see great returns. While I did manage to stir up a little more interest in my blog, it wasn’t worth the time nor content invested. I enjoyed being able to share things on Instagram, and I’m happy that people could enjoy what I shared there, but it was a drain on my actual writing goals–goals that are more important than traffic, likes, or “social media presence.”

All that said, my initial goal of driving traffic to my blog didn’t actualize in any significant way (it just meant more sharing work surrounding each new blog post). And in the past year, I’ve discovered that a timeless and well-written post that people are searching for is my single best draw for new traffic. I’ve always preferred the “just write and let them come” thing, and now I’m beginning to see how that can work–without Instagram.

REASON #4: A Healthy Dose of Positive Peer Pressure

The three reasons listed above were not the only ones nagging at me. My love-hate relationship with Instagram included a few more considerations and questions that I hadn’t fully enumerated before. Enter Mystie Winckler, whose blog I’ve been following for a number of years and whose voice and thought process I highly respect. I was actually trying to convince myself that I could take this “Instagram thing” up a notch–make it work, post more content–when Mystie announced she would be deleting her account and gave her reasons in this article. Having some of those nagging concerns listed out in front of me helped me see that I really didn’t want to work things out with Instagram!

I posted my “resignation,” if you will, a few days later.

The Results: Goodbye, Instagram; Hello, Freedom

So, how’s life on the other side? Well, it’s life. Real life. And a whole lot of it.

Getting off of Instagram (and making good use of that Freedom app) has made me so much more aware of how buried I am in projects around the house. 😂 And doesn’t that make sense? Don’t we often look to social media as an escape from what we have to do? From the overwhelm that hits when we consider just how much there is to do–and the guilt that has piled up from the last several instances of escapism?

With social media and even email under tight regulations thanks to the Freedom app, I can begin to see the mess much more clearly. And yes, on one level that is frustrating. But it’s also liberating. I’m making huge gains in home and life management: chipping away at goals surrounding our school booklist, finances, painting/remodeling projects, fitness, being “all there” during school time with my kids, more readily reaching for a book, more readily allowing prayer to fill the natural pauses in my day. And doing so without any impulse to capture it for the world to see, which I find allows me to enjoy these things–and not just the images of them–far more.

I’m also free to enjoy our homeschool without images of someone else’s pretty school room making me sigh over the scratched up kitchen table and 34-year-old linoleum floors that greet us every morning.

You think these things–all the perfect images–don’t get to you. But they do… Until you decide to ignore them.

And that is when you begin to really appreciate the beauty of the people God has given you and the places and things–even the worn-out, unphotogenic things–He’s graciously provided.

I’m still planning on replacing that floor, though.

As for the blog, well, while I have never gotten high amounts of traffic, I’m getting better traffic than ever, even when I haven’t posted for a whole month. That increase in traffic is coming from search engines, not social media–even though when I initially publish a post my greatest source of traffic comes from sharing it on Facebook. Turns out my real-life friends are far more likely to read what I write than strangers on Instagram. I think that’s the best I could hope for–knowing that what I write blesses the people I know is way better than increasing numbers among people I don’t know.

I only wish I could say that I’m writing and publishing more frequently, but I think that will come in time. For now I’m taking care of business around the house and for my family (which will continue to be my top priority by a long shot, even as I hope to up my writing output).

The Verdict

While I understand that some people favor Instagram over other platforms and can use it to reach their goals, I have found that I absolutely do not miss or need Instagram in my life.

It’s also true, however, that a distracted mind will find distraction without Instagram’s help. And that’s why I can’t say that all of my results come from simply dropping the ‘gram–deleting my account along with the Freedom app’s ability to schedule blocks on any other online distractions or apps has been a knock-out punch. I highly recommend you look into Freedom or another such tool. I’ve found it an invaluable piece of the puzzle.

Whatever you choose to do to manage the social media and internet beast, let me leave you with this encouragement:

Rightly ordered living is, well, rightly ordered living. And no amount of pretty pictures or affirmation in the form of likes on Instagram can make up for the lack of it.