Why I Quit Instagram After 10+ Years

I credit Instagram for inspiring me to find landscape photography and push myself to travel. In 2014, Instagram started to shift from an app people used to add filters to their smart phone photos to a social platform where photographers dominated. This was the era when the chronological feed was still alive and before the algorithms changed everything. A place that platformed travel photography, grand landscapes to the masses, and inspired me to leave my home town to explore the world.

This started the golden era of Instagram for photographers. It’s entirely possible I wouldn’t have fallen in love with nature and landscape photography without the inspiration and influence of photographers posting to the platform in 2015. I feel it’s important to give credit to the platform that likely inspired millions to pick up a camera. Many found incredible success, developing their entire business models and outreach simply through a single platform. A platform entirely dedicated to photos where over a billion people, most of which are not photographers, all logging in to potentially see your work. Unlike the majority of other photography platforms such as flickr or 500px, Instagram was made for everyone to share on - not just photographers.

This is why nothing will likely ever replicate the golden era of Instagram. It allowed photographers to reach millions of non-photographers by simply sharing their work. Over the last 5 years photography has slowly died on Instagram, which likely doesn’t come as a surprise to any photographer still using the platform. Is it finally time to quit Instagram all together?

I did and it comes down to three major principles: happiness, business, and ethics.

Does Instagram Make You Happy?

The first question to ponder over is: does instagram provide a positive impact on your life? This can only be answered by you, but I can speak for myself in saying that my mental health has always struggled from social media. While I still credit a lot of inspiration from what I discovered through Instagram, it has always been a source of mixed emotions. Anytime we put our work into the world, theres a chance no one cares.

Prior to the last 20 years, sharing your work for the world to see happened so infrequently that it was far less prevalent as an artist. Now we experience this possibly every day. Every photo we post has a response, a like count, analytics. Paying attention to these numbers is an easy trap to fall into when making art (and we all do it). These factors end up potentially shaping the work we make. “Oh this image will do great on the feed, but I won’t ever post this one because it’s too boring.”

Combine this with the fact that we can now compare our stats, work, and progress to thousands of other people at anytime - sometimes it leaves us feeling completely deflated in confidence. On the other hand there are also times we receive validation and positive feedback that inspires us to keep going. What if we post a photo we were unsure of and it takes off? That might feel great and inspire you to enjoy your work more. What if our work gets seen and shared by those who inspire us? That feels like cloud nine!

If posting to Instagram makes you happy overall, or you still find happiness in consuming on Instagram then by all means, continue. Personally for me it’s always been a struggle to feel fulfilled and while it has inspired me or brought me happiness in the past - overall I feel like my life feels better without it. My favorite part is simply staying in touch with friends or acquaintances but that seems like one of the last features the platform is intended to fulfill.

Everything in this section sums up my feelings from nearly five years ago. I realized (and talked about it here) back in 2020 that my enjoyment of Instagram was dwindling and that overall I didn’t find happiness from the platform outside of a few key features like staying in touch. That’s when I decided to separate my work from business. This meant I actively consumed a lot less on Instagram but still contributed because it made sense from a business perspective.

Does Instagram Improve Your Business?

One of the best things I ever did for my mental health as an artist on Instagram was completely stop caring about numbers. Was it annoying that portrait oriented aspect ratios always did better on a feed than wide screen landscapes? Absolutely, but I stopped caring. The like count, the responses, and the analytics had no correlation to the work I was creating. My best and most awarded work could easily do far worse than a quick photo I took in a majestic place.

By approaching Instagram like a business where all that mattered was to share consistently and to pick images that serve the platform better, it meant I put a lot less of myself into sharing. This might be difficult for some, but overall it was a game you could choose to play or not. Back in 2019ish photos were still dominant on Instagram and it was absolutely the most efficient platform to grow an audience as a photographer. There was nothing better or even close to Instagram aside from maybe it’s sibling, Facebook.

Regardless, most photographers agreed that it was a necessary evil. If they wanted their work to be seen by the largest possible audience, Instagram was the place to be. Thus from a business perspective it just made sense to participate, grow your brand, and hopefully turn your following into revenue. So maybe Instagram wasn’t bringing you joy, but it was bringing you growth for your brand? That’s a perfectly reasonable justification to keep participating.

This was where I was until the last few years. With the rise of the attention economy and complete shift from being a photo app to essentially a vessel to keep people’s attention through reels, endless scrolling, and engagement. Not only did the photography dwindle, the business side of things started to make less and less sense. But I still continued, even trying to find a middle ground by posting a photo reel every single day for a year.

It was after that project from about a year ago that I started asking myself - do I believe this platform aligns with my morals?

Is Instagram Good for the World?

I must warn you that this section is subjective and comes from a very personal place. Your opinion may be very different than mine and that’s okay.

For many years we’ve questioned the impacts that social media would have on society at large. Studies have been done, documentaries produced, and we’ve likely all felt some of those waves. Being constantly connected, sharing our entire lives online, caring more about a selfie at a beautiful spot than simply enjoying the spot, the need to exist online, constantly having the fear of missing out, comparing our lives to others, etc. The list goes on. This was all occurring before what I think holds the most responsibility for shaping our lives in present day, “the algorithm.”

I should clarify that I have nothing against algorithms. Many of them are extremely useful. YouTube presents videos to me that I choose to watch and hopefully find interesting. The music I get served that I’ve never listened to has a much higher chance for me to enjoy because of an algorithm. Google search results have used an algorithm essentially since it became a word in our lexicon.

Algorithms are not evil. The issue is how they are implemented by social media platforms such as Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, Threads, and even YouTube. They are written and developed with one soul purpose - attention. It’s possible I should refer to this more as an attention economy than an algorithmic issue but the driving force is to keep attention as engaged as possible using an algorithm.

The algorithm is simple: Attention equals more revenue. Thus content that attracts or keeps people’s attention is rewarded with more views and because of human psychology there are a couple easy things to do to tap into grabbing people’s attention. Things that upset or outrage us, that make us feel empathy or concern, sex appeal, curiosity, clickbait - the list is long. Regardless of where you live or your political beliefs, I hope we can all agree that algorithmic based social media has completely reshaped culture and our current lives over the past 10 years. It’s caused more divisiveness, disinformation, and social destruction than we can even comprehend at the moment.

Overall it leaves me asking the question: Is Instagram Good for the World? As I said earlier, I personally don’t gain a lot of joy from Instagram but I do appreciate the ability to stay connected with friends. As time has gone on and the platform(s) have changed into an attention economy, thus rewarding certain types of media with more eyes - I’m starting to think that the world might be better off without such a platform. I can live with platforms that reward people for their work, but ultimately it feels like much of the attention is being given to some of the worst things. Endless political news cycles, AI images or video, outrage content, and so many other forms of media. Much of which doesn’t necessarily provide much value to anyone. It’s why a lot of this consumption is referred to as “doom scrolling” or “brain rot.” Thus if I ultimately feel as though these platforms are negatively impacting my life, maybe it’s time I stop contributing or consuming on them?

The argument could be made that we need more people creating positive and useful content. While I agree with that, the issue is it has to fight against all the other topics that psychologically will never win in an attention economy. Think of how much bad news you read vs how much good - thats simply down to which one typically keeps people attention or gets clicks.

Now I’m not perfect nor am I trying to virtue signal here. I’ve still posted to threads over the last year, I made a couple story posts trying to sell my Hasselblad X2D or my Colorado Workshop slots. I tried using the little bit of an audience I had to help my business. I didn’t delete my account permanently and say goodbye. I haven’t reached that point yet, mostly due to staying connected with certain people.

I’m writing this in hopes that people realize we are the product. If you stop posting or sharing, and then another person stops posting or sharing - we slowly stop using the platform. In no world do I think my photos on instagram are keeping someone on the platform. However I do know if my peers largely stopped posting - I’d feel a lot less incentivized to open it up. If you’re like me and have reached a point where you think these platforms are doing more harm than good, then it’s good to take a step back and ask ourselves why we are contributing.

You absolutely don’t have to make the same decisions I do, but I do hope that I’ve provided meaningful food for thought. Would love to know in the comments what your thoughts are.