I joined Instagram in seventh grade. At the time, I was mostly there to see my sister post her art. I had little intention to cultivate my own profile, to pose for my own pictures, or to curate a carefully planned palette of posts. Yet I quickly connected with school friends, hovering admiringly over their filtered feeds, wondering if my life could look like theirs. It did not take long before mall outings became photoshoot opportunities and outfits became props selected for an invisible audience of followers.
By the end of high school, I had at least realized that Instagram browsing never made me feel good. The longer I scrolled, the more I began to compare myself to posed, filtered pictures, growing envious and insecure and desperate for validation, believing more and more that what Instagram showed me was reality. Of course, I knew that was false. Or at least, I had been told that before, and sometimes, after a long session of scrolling, staring blankly at my inert bedroom wall, I repeated to myself what I thought I knew: it’s not real. But all the while, it certainly felt real.
Over the last year, I’ve gone through phases. I removed the app from the homepage of my phone, but I quickly learned to search for the app and open it anyway. So I deleted the app entirely, but later logged on in Safari and resumed scrolling. I lived with these half-solutions, convincing myself that social media was not all bad, that I was not as gullible as I used to be, that I would use my account redemptively. None of these reasons for staying were outright wrong: social media can be used for good, I was at least a little more thoughtful about how I spent my attention, and I made an effort to use my posts to remember key events and reflect on God’s faithfulness.
But over the last month, I have become increasingly convinced that, at least for me, there is very little reason to continue being at all active on Instagram.
Earlier this month, Hunter Beless announced her social media experiment: quit for six months and see if there’s a noticeable effect. She was prompted by the directness of a friend, who said to her, “I see nothing helpful about it [social media].” The post was not a call to delete or leave social media. Beless was not even suggesting that her followers join her in a temporary break. But what struck me was her willingness to listen to the confrontation of a friend and to be humble enough to change the way she lives, even if it may only be temporary. Would I be teachable to a friend who pointed out the same thing? Would I be quick to listen and honor their observations? More than that, although Beless was just beginning an experiment she didn’t necessarily know the result of, I didn’t need an experiment to show me that social media did more to pull me away from God than draw me near. I already knew that if I were to go on a six month fast from Instagram, I would enjoy deeper fellowship with God. So why did I stay?
Though I have known for long enough that social media does little to fuel my love for God, for too long I’ve bought into the lie that if I could just be stronger, or try harder at self-control, or keep at it long enough, I could be impermeable to the toxins of Instagram. Some part of that may be true: when I see a perfectly-posed, pristine post and react with envy, the ultimate source of my sin is my heart. Therefore, it’s not the fault of the user who posted the image or the algorithm that pushed it to the top of my feed or Mark Zuckerberg or social media culture as a whole. I can’t blame any of these external factors for my own sin.
But there is also great wisdom in avoiding what we know will tempt us. And social media is not neutral. We may believe we can use social media to stay up-to-date without internalizing any of its detrimental effects, but do we realize that looking at something means consuming it? We may approach it with the idea that all will be fine if we only learn to limit screentime, but perhaps we forget that the goal of every social media platform is to keep us scrolling as long as possible.
That was the other question. How much time did I waste every day looking at things of almost complete insignificance? Things that find description in Wendell Berry’s “In Defense of Literacy” as information “meant to be merely glanced at, or heard only once, or read once and thrown away. . . . meant to be replaced by what will immediately follow it.”
At the start of this summer, I bulleted several of my goals: read more, write more, add to my prayer list, catch up with friends, evangelize my non-Christian friends, memorize more Scripture. But how much precious time did I fritter away on Instagram, peering at posts that mean nothing to me now? How much time did I spend on YouTube, clicking on video after video, not really learning anything new? Glenna Marshall offered tips on memorizing Scripture in “mental downtimes during your day,” but had I already filled all these “mental downtimes” with social media?
In the back of my mind was Jerry Bridges’s The Pursuit of Holiness, which I finished at the end of June. Bridges challenged me to take responsibility for my sin, to exert real effort toward holiness, and to hate sin as God hates sin:
The Apostle John said, “My dear children, I write this to you so that you will not sin” (1 John 2:1). The whole purpose of John’s letter, he says, is that we not sin. One day as I was studying this chapter I realized that my personal life’s objective regarding holiness was less than that of John’s. He was saying, in effect, “Make it your aim not to sin.” As I thought about this, I realized that deep within my heart my real aim was not to sin very much. (92-93)
The question I began to ask myself was this: was I willing to do whatever it took to fight―and put to death―my sin?
It is really quite simple. If growing in holiness matters more to me than the few benefits of social media, it is more than worth it for me to quit Instagram―at least for now, but very likely for good. I have given up trying to play with fire, for “can a man carry fire next to his chest and his clothes not be burned?” (Prov. 6:27).
If you asked me, I would tell you to leave social media if you can. I have deactivated my Instagram account, and already my mind and my time feel freer. But the purpose of this post is not to convince you to leave. It is rather to serve as a case study for the things that we foolishly try to negotiate with, the things that we know do not promote godliness in us but we continue to tolerate, the things we cling to though they harm us. For me, one of these things has been social media.
May the Lord be gracious to open our eyes to these snares, and may we be willing to respond with humble obedience.