I’ve Lost 2000 Followers on Instagram. And I Don’t Care.

Instagram used to be my creative playground. Now I’m reluctant to open the app.

Last week I pulled my journal towards me and wrote, ‘I’ve lost 2k followers on IG.’ Then, after a pause, I added: ‘and I don’t care.’

I’m currently in the process of writing a non-fiction book proposal and one of the things I had in my favour was a fairly healthy-sized Instagram account to impress the publishers with. So to come out publically and state that I don’t care about losing a large number of followers over two years is perhaps not the wisest move I’ve ever made. But that just shows the strength of my feelings about Instagram now. I genuinely don’t care.

In their desire to keep us on the app, to keep us scrolling, they’ve actually had the opposite effect. I am so over it.

The app, previously one of my favourite places to be creative and to be inspired, has become a place of stress, of rules and algorithms and a place of dopamine addiction. I do not feel good whilst using it.

I felt stuck, though. I thought I was tied to it. That I needed it for my work — whatever that was at the time. I needed it for a platform, I needed it because I might be spotted by a publisher or agent. Walking away from it was just too…