Sneha Jaiswal (Twitter | Instagram)

First of all, yes, this isn’t an original post idea at all. In fact, I was triggered by an article that showed up on my homepage about some writer saying, “I quit Instagram for three weeks, and these are the things I learned.” And it was a major publication, think Vogue level, but not Vogue. Although if Vogue also has a feature along similar lines, nobody is getting surprised.

My first thought after reading the headline was, “Three weeks? Lol, I bet I could last longer without Instagram.” In fact, my initial plan was to quit Instagram for only a month. But turns out, it’s really not that hard, so I ended up quitting Instagram for over three months. 106 days, to be exact.

Now, let me clarify: when I say I “quit Instagram,” I did not straight-up delete my accounts (NO WAY. It was super hard to get over 1,000 followers with zero talent for taking photos or videos. And like the meme goes, each time I post something, people unfollow me). So, yeah, I simply deleted the app from my phone and didn’t log into Instagram from anywhere else either.

And I wish I could write an insightful feature about how liberating it was to not be on Instagram, especially since it’s basically the only “social media” platform I was active on, apart from Twitter. I’ve never been on Snapchat, TikTok has been banned in India since 2020 anyway, I practically detest LinkedIn (haven’t posted there since 2024), and I stopped using Facebook long ago.

Unfortunately, I had definitely started spending more time than usual doom-scrolling silly videos on Instagram.

I’m not even going to count the fact that my doom-scrolling obviously reduced as one of the changes, because, well, that’s just an obvious result of deleting the app. My stress levels remained pretty much the same. But then again, that never had much to do with the content I was consuming. Nor did I experience any “FOMO” (fear of missing out). That’s actually why the one-month experiment eventually stretched into more than three months.

In fact, now that I’m back and up to date on what some of my friends, ex-colleagues, and random acquaintances I maybe met once ten years ago are doing, I don’t really know why I’m back.

But anyway, here are two big changes from after I quit Instagram:

1. I read more books

Since I track my reading on Goodreads, I distinctly remember being three books behind schedule when I was still doom-scrolling and swapping stupid videos with friends through DMs. Right now, I’m three books ahead of schedule and have already read more regular novels than usual, which is saying something, because I tend to read far more comics and graphic novels. Currently reading the over 1000 page Shogun by James Clavell.

2. Made better progress with my language course

Yes, I’m learning a new language (German), and this year, for the first time, I’ve read three German graphic novels and can confidently hold intermediate-level conversations about how bad my day was because I had too much work and the weather was humid and shitty.

That’s it.

I did stop drinking coffee for about 5 weeks too, but that has nothing to do with this.

Maybe the biggest takeaway from all this, for me, was that we aren’t really all that dependent on the things that seem so entrenched in our daily lives. And giving up some form of social media to make way for more productive activities (a little extra reading, in my case) is probably worth the trade-off.

I survived just fine without knowing where people I haven’t spoken to in a decade were holidaying. And now I’m back on Instagram, and everybody is posting eerily similar-looking AI-generated photos of themselves in 1980s get-ups.

Oh, and actually, I’ve been finding more time to make shorter podcast versions of my written reviews too!

Read Next: Himawari House Book Review (Or you can listen to me below)