Confessions of an Instagram Addict

I hate to say it, but I am an Instagram addict. I see friends and they tell me, “Oh I loved your photos on Instagram, you really post a lot!” A back-handed compliment, praised tinged with judgment. I don’t really know anyone in my personal life who uses the medium so ardently, so consistently, so obsessively, and to what end?

On days when I’m feeling good, I tell myself this is just an extension of my life as an artist, or as I’ve come to prefer calling myself“content creator”. Content creator, is just a less awful way of saying I am catering to my “personal brand”, empty words that signal to empty efforts. Calling yourself an artist or a writer implies value, depth and thought - my forays in social media, my Instagram problem doesn’t feel meaningful at all.

Boredom inspires me to sometimes treat my social media accounts as a video game, not unlike The Sims. Rather than merely a reflection of who I am, what I see, what I do, it becomes an opportunity to accumulate likes and friends. I’m strangely proud of the nearly 600 followers I’ve accumulated, but then I look at a classmate of mine who runs a successful fashion blog who has well over 200K and I come back to wondering, what am I doing? Why am I doing it?

Recent studies have linked feelings of depression and inadequacy to Facebook. A 2013 article in the New Yorker entitled, “How Facebook Makes Us Unhappy” by Maria Konnikova delves into these findings, searching for answers as to why the “social” aspect of media was actually making us feel increasingly alienated. Konnikova writes:

The psychologist Beth Anderson and her colleagues argue, in a recent review of Facebook’s effects, that using the network can quickly become addictive, which comes with a nagging sense of negativity that can lead to resentment of the network for some of the same reasons we joined it to begin with. We want to learn about other people and have others learn about us—but through that very learning process we may start to resent both others’ lives and the image of ourselves that we feel we need to continuously maintain. “It may be that the same thing people find attractive is what they ultimately find repelling,”

I might not be addicted to Facebook, but the effects are the same. As I scroll through my Instagram feed, I am both marvelled and upset by people’s beautiful vacations abroad, happy relationships and active social lives. I look at my Instagram and feel a stab of sadness, but also a sense of inspiration.

Maybe my Instagram is a work of art after all, an accumulative portrait in loneliness and isolation. I have to scroll back 26 photos before I find one with me and another human being. My photos of parties, of vacations, of friends are the anomaly: I’ve fully embraced the alienation of Instagram and cherish it as a portrait of my alone life. I don’t take photos when I am with others, because I have them to fill my time and my life. I use it to show the things I am looking at, and have time to look at because I am myself by myself.

Also, be sure to follow CJLO’s awesome Instagram page: http://instagram.com/cjlo1690am

- Justine Smith is CJLO Magazine’s Additional Content Editor