I never joined Twitter and at one point even deleted my Facebook page but brought it back. I don’t understand TikTok and have never been on the platform. I joined LinkedIN last week but won’t download the app on my phone. I can’t decide if YouTube is considered a social media platform but I wish YouTube Shorts had never been invented because they suck the attention of the 3 guys in my life like nothing else. I have deleted and re-instated my Nextdoor account more times than I care to admit and have landed on having one now because of a professional need. I think Substack is wonderful as an alternative place online to connect but have only gotten my toes wet. But Instagram was love at first sight.
I didn’t write this essay because you need to know my on and off again relationship with Instagram but because my own experience has informed and continues to inform my parenting decisions around social media. We have to start with our own relationship to social media if we want to have an authentic and useful conversation with our tweens and teens who are asking for their own social media accounts. Having my own changing relationship with social media and seeing how proactive I needed to be in order to handle and deal with the exposure, content, addicting nature and feelings that came with even minimal social media use made it really easy for me to say no to social media when the first requests for SnapChat started rolling in when our son was in 8th grade. Hard no. Easy. But I am a 48 year old with pretty good self awareness and a fully formed pre-frontal cortex and I was consumed by Instagram at one point.
In 2018, I joined Instagram as a way of sharing pictures, feelings and stories about our year of travel with friends and family. I set up a private account and collected a solid community of people I or we knew personally. Occasionally a request to follow from a friend of a friend who had heard about our adventures popped up and I had to take a moment to decide to approve the request or not, but in general it felt like a safe and protected container to share photos of our children, our locations and honest and heartfelt experiences with close friends. It became a daily journal of that one daily moment to share that stood out from all the others - a way to process and digest what we were experiencing. Those I followed back shared photos and feelings, insights and moments - some mundane, some exhilarating. But always authentic. It was about beauty and sharing original content. It was about pictures and connecting. It was about creativity. It was like getting a glimpse into the world of people I loved, even though we were separated by distance. I followed a handful of other traveling families, some of whom I knew, others who I didn’t but all helped me create community around this otherwise isolating thing we were doing. The platform was as intended: a nurturing and comforting online community. When we returned home and the adventure turned into life with kids in school in Northern California, it became a place to stay connected with those we had met while traveling while still staying in touch with friends and family.
In Fall 2019, our story changed. My reason for journaling changed. And though I had been very honest about the challenges of traveling and never shied away for saying how it really was, the transition home was unexpectedly rough and there was no way to sugar coat what was happeing, even for Instagram. I mean who wants to see the messy, the tears, the broken - all those parts that make being a human human. But I still longed for the connection and online community but our stories felt no longer relatable - here in this community that had felt so good, I know felt isolated and alone. I still needed a daily way to digest our experiences but this was too real and too honest and too complicated so I stopped posting but kept scrolling. But I found that when I scrolled through those I followed, I began to feel a strange envy for those families who were still traveling or homeschooling even though I 100% wanted to be home and I wanted our kids to be in school. And I began to feel even deeper envy, almost resentment for the friends and family who seemed to post effortless pictures of Back-to-School and then perfect pumpkin carving and weekends at soccer games. This is when my relationship with Instagram got complicated.
I started to ask myself “What isn’t feeling right anymore?”. One clear answer was following families (only 2 of whom I knew personally) who were still traveling and families who were homeschooling. And though I loved their ideas and the pictures and the adventures and didn’t want to forget about them, I unfollowed. This didn’t make a big flashy difference but it seemed to just create a little more space for being ok with what was happening in real life, in our family, at that moment. I realized 3 things about using social media: 1. It’s ok to Unfollow. 2. Follow friends, people, businesses and experts that add something to what is happening in our life now. 3. The types of online communities that we need or want can (and will) change and we can change our social media accounts to reflect that.
Several months later, in 2020, 4 months into what was the pandemic, we were globally more isolated and online than ever before. I started a new public Instagram account after I watched one of our sons write #blacklivesmatter in chalk under a rainbow on our driveway. Something had changed again. The world this time. And in the middle of the lockdowns, I found a new community within the walls of Instagram - mostly moms (some dads) who were trying to make sense of what was happening with our schools, our families, our worries, our communities, our hospitals, our streets and who needed a way to connect. I started following writers I admired and writers I had never heard of, wise women and healers. I started following doctors and social justice advocates. I started following news sources and local game changers. I found a new groove. With content and connection and community.
But then, I started to feel more overwhelmed - so many book suggestions to read and articles to check out and cultural norms to abandon and societal injustices to heal and new change makers to follow and suggestions for local volunteering and parenting tips for dyslexia/ADHD to embrace and dietary changes to make and exercises for knee pain to try and morning routines to create. I started to feel like so many places in my life needed fixing and all the solutions were on Instagram - but instead of it inspiring action in me it kept me frozen. Frozen in inaction and overwhelm. I was also starting to notice an underbelly on the platform that I had never been part of before because in our private family account I had mostly followed friends. Cruel comments, shaming, hatred, misinformation and more and more TikTok content of people doing the same things instead of creating original content. More and more videos and quick sound bites instead of still images with thoughtful captions. I wasted precious time and brain space with my own mindless scrolling through the vast abyss of content that the algorithm had decided was relevant to me. So I went back to what I had learned and unfollowed a lot. So then I had 3 new realization about social media use: 1. I don’t need to respond or like everything 2. I need to set a time-limit 3. I want this to be an intentional use of my time, so that I can read, digest and respond in thoughtful ways which means I need to follow less than 50 profiles.
I have curated, reduced, screentimed, unfollowed and unsubscribed my way to a place with Instagram that does finally feel like social media tranquility. The truth is that currently for my public personal use, it is a place I connect with a few women and moms who I love and who are mostly far away. I can’t go have tea with them or for a walk but this is our space to check-in and share. And I follow a few professionals who I find really helpful and relevant for right now. I have a time limit set for 20 minutes and when its done its done. I deleted the app from my phone and only check it on my laptop - which to me is visually more spacious (I enjoy the content more) and means that I don’t mindlessly grab my phone in a moment of boredom or impatience waiting in line for soccer practice to get out. I actually put a book in my bag instead.
We should love our online communities, not fluctuate between loving and hating them. We should love our online communities, not be part of them out of a fear of missing out or because we think we should be there or have to be there. We should love our online communities because they are aligned with our values, intentions, professional goals or aspirations. We should love our online communities because they bring value to our lives and/or we bring value to them. We should love our online communities because we have something positive, useful, inspiring, thought provoking, educational or practical to share and this is a way technology allows us to do that. We should love our online communities because they either supplement and add to the community we are able to have in person or they replace the one we have in-person because in-person isn’t logistically or geographically possible. This is the messaging I am using in my new professional life to inform how we are choosing to use social media. This is the messaging I give to our teen. This is the messaging that will inform our rules and decisions about social media use for him - not because researchers or professionals told me that it’s the right way but because I have spent the time to figure out for myself how I want this tech tool to work with my life, not against it.
But what does that look like in practice?
Without controls or scaffolding, apps, social media platforms and personal devices begin to tell us what we should prioritize instead of the other way around. It’s NEVER too late to tighten the reigns, for yourself or your tween/teen and re-align tech use with your life. It takes some effort, some discomfort, some actual detoxing (this is no joke actually) but slowly the knee-jerk mindless reaction to pick up of the phone lessens and voice in your mind that stays occupied with thoughts like “I should take a picture because I can post this” or “I need to buy that book that so and so recommended” quiets down, making space for attention to what is happening in the present moment.
Let go of judgement of yourself - You don’t need to change a thing about your social media use. Ever. But if you want do, you can. At anytime.
Daily 20-30 min limit. If on an Apple Device, set daily ScreenLimit App limits.
Consider deleting the app from your personal device and accessing it only on a computer. If that doesn’t feel right, consider deleting it from your Homescreen on your device so it is not so easily accessible.
Follow less than 50 people. For friends, follow those who you’d have over for dinner, even if that is not geographically possible.
Make your account private. This is personal and has to do with how you are using your account.
Unfollow accounts that make you feel bad. Whatever emotion it is that is uncomfortable - you don’t need to follow profiles that cause you distress. That being said, social media has been a catalyst for people sharing information that hasn’t always been easily accessible. Info that is challenging or confronting or uncomfortable. Info that pushes our boundaries and comfort zones in a good way. But too much of this without the correct outlet or call to action can have a negative impact on our mental health. This doesn’t mean you need to only follow profiles the post about puppies and unicorns - though that is good way to change your mood! You can flood the algorithm with any kind of content and this then creates the environment that breeds more - so what kind of environment for your brain do you want to breed? This can be good. This can be really bad. The point is to pay attention to who you are following and why and know that we have the power to tell the machines what we want from them. Most people (and most teenagers) don’t realize this or don’t realize how impactful this can be.
Unfollow accounts that cause you overwhelm either by the amount of the content they share or by the type or quality of content that they share. Following too many profiles is what may cause overwhelm by creating a need/impulse/addiction to see daily new posts and interact with them.
Unfollow profiles or accounts that aren’t serving you right now. It doesn’t mean you don’t love them or want to support them it just means you are being more discerning about the amount of content you can realistically digest. For example, when we traveled - following other traveling families was ideal but once we got home I experience more envy and isolation than community. When we remodeled our home, following designers was ideal but once we were complete with the project seeing new trends and ideas that we hadn’t incorporated created envy, regret and a reinforced that the grass is actually greener over at that other person’s house.
If you don’t want to unfollow profiles, you can Mute profiles or accounts for a week, month or indefinitely. Can you mute a profile’s Stories and Posts for a shore time and then Unmute them after some time away from the profile. Or Mute only Stories if that content feels too quick or erratic and only follow a profile’s Post & Reel content. The point is that you curate what and whose content you want to read.
Choose Social Media Free hours or days or choose special times to engage in social media. Do you know that the 8-10pm window is prime time for moms on social media? I know from experience. Maybe that is your special time and ritual where it feels special to connect and scroll online. Maybe it’s exactly when you don’t want to be on social media and you make that the time you don’t check it then. Maybe one weekend day or the whole weekend you go social media free. Maybe one weekend a month. Maybe on vacation. The point is you can curate when you engage with social media.
Don't buy anything that is advertised on Instagram. I know it’s tempting. I have done it which is why this is here.
Ask yourself “Who are you posting for?”
Know that you don’t have to reply or respond to every post, every day to be relevant or stay in the conversation. You can pause before responding.
Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should. This is my favorite mantra when it comes to a lot of things but it’s pretty relevant when it comes to social media. You don’t need to be on every platform. You can be discerning and picky and still stay connected, be relevant (if you are a professional or business) and have a “successful” online community.
It may be that living and raising children in a world with such prevalent social media use means loosening and tightening the reigns constantly - adapting to the terrain, the mood and the need which for all of us is always changing. That’s the hard exhausting, work. There in also lies the radical acceptance that there is no one-and-done solution to anything involving technology use. Sorry. That is just the way it is. But for me, this one life of mine and those of our boys are too precious to not keep at it, to not keep asking and pausing and finding the places to say yes and the places to say not in a million years.
Love,
Interested in leaving Instagram completely? Don’t miss my three favorite essays from women who made the decision to leave their robust online communities and never looked back:
Tsh Oxenreider’s 2 Essays : Why I’m Leaving Instagram and Leaving Instagram: One Year Later
Annelise Roberts : 5 things: the leaving Instagram edition
PS Next post is about how I answered the “Hey mom, can I have Insta?” question. And it wasn’t just a hard no.