A Year Without Instagram, Part 3

on friendship, connection, and being 'social'

This is Part 3 in a series about leaving Instagram and observing myself existing without it for a whole year. You can read Part 1 here and Part 2 here.

Obviously, if you’re enjoying your time on IG or TikTok or any of the platforms and don’t feel the need to explore a break, that’s fantastic for you! No judgment from me, and what follows will probably read like a whole lot of hand-wringing over something that isn’t A Thing for you. But I’ve had enough conversations to know that it very much IS A Thing for many of us, so let’s dive back in…

I wrote about where I was with social media at the beginning of 2024 when I left Instagram. I shared how, as the months without the app passed, I was both disappointed in the lack of big changes to my phone use and attention span, but also pleasantly surprised to find myself altered nonetheless. I’m reading more, beginning to write more, and I feel significantly less reactive to and activated by everything from breaking news to consumerist desires to professional envy to what my peers’ kids are doing. I think I needed the better part of the full year off of Instagram to begin to see these shifts; now that I’ve seen them, I’m deeply resolved that this is the path for me.

saw this squirrel just chilling on a power line the other day - woulda made for a funny Instagram caption, but instead I texted it to my work bestie Meagan

But there’s an aspect of being on social media that I’m still poking at and wondering about, and that is the social part.

I’ll just say it: there’s a lot that I miss about being active on Instagram from a friendship and social perspective. I benefitted from the app as a long-distance-friend touchpoint, a new-friendship accelerant, and a friendly professional common space. Being away from the ‘gram has had an actual impact on each of these three areas in ways I’m still figuring out:

Bridging distance and staying connected with faraway IRL friends

Social media allows us to maintain ties to friends from childhood, high school, college, new parenthood, you name it. What always felt weird to me was that the more active both parties were on a platform, the easier it was to feel connected and the more an illusion of original closeness began to replace the actual relationship. A high school buddy or an old neighbor who posted a ton on social would loom larger in my memory not because we were that tight back in the day, but because they were kept top of mind by virtue of how often they showed up in my feed.

Over many years of social media use, and multiple life moves that place me at a geographical distance from once-nearby friends, this started to feel like I was letting an app decide who I wanted to keep in touch with, rather than my own authentic desires.

Without social media, I’m left to sort it all out the old-fashioned way: to whom do I owe a phone call or a text? Whose life, job, kids, etc. am I curious enough about to reach out between annual holiday cards? Whom would it be a delight to run into serendipitously, or even plan a meetup with if we were in the same city? (And the corollary, which should be asked: whom am I okay never seeing again, if that’s the way the cookie crumbles?)

Honestly, I don’t have all those answers. I feel a little sad about losing touch with some old friends who’ve never used social media, and with others who do but I’m no longer seeing their posts. On the flip side, I feel MUCH (much. much!) more motivated to build depth and lasting intimacy in the friendships that I have maintained over the years. I really enjoy a good phone catch-up, and there’s something novel about texting photos back and forth. I also leave room for the possibility that old friends I’m not in touch with might pop up in my life somehow (my phone number has been the same for 20 years, to start!), and that life has a wild, weird way, of circling back on unfinished business.

Making new friends, slowly

Confession: I used to love the moment when a new acquaintance became a social media friend. It reminded me of going over to a new school friend’s house for the first time: seeing their bedroom, meeting their siblings, finding out what snacks their mom stocked in the pantry. Getting to that level of new-friendship started to add color and detail to whatever first impressions had built up thus far.

I didn’t realize how much I appreciated Instagram in particular as an accelerant to new-friend closeness until I stopped using it. I told myself I was making new friends the old fashioned way - other moms at school, neighbors, friends-of-friends, etc. - and I was. But I was also relying on Instagram to sweeten those early days of new friendship, to gain intimacy quicker, and to fast-forward what would otherwise be a get-to-know-you period marked by, well, actual getting to know someone. Igot more intel and background info from a new friend’s grid than I would have in a coffee date, and in turn I offered more of myself in friendly online gestures (likes, comments, DMs) than I would have in a dozen IRL interactions. These were in-person connections that were being fast-tracked to closeness through social media.

I’m mostly OK giving up this benefit of Instagram, but I acknowledge that it served me in a time where my ability to meet a new friend for dinner was limited and my eagerness to connect was peak. I’m now in a season of life where I’m meeting quite a few new acquaintances, some of whom are becoming friends in a gradual, natural way. If I breathe through the minor discomfort of wanting to know more about someone sooner, I’m finding that the slower blossoming of a new friendship is one I prefer.

Part of moving to my hometown after 22 years away also means that I constantly run into people from my past, and being off of social media means I truly - and happily - have no clue what those folks have been up to. It’s actually really fun to catch up the way previous generations had to, without this awkward incongruity where I haven’t seen the person in 15 years but I know where they went on vacation this summer or what their kitchen looks like.

Connection and creative collaboration…but how?

I miss my Internet work friends. I really do.

One of the things I loved most about Instagram was maintaining ties to women all over the country who worked in similar online spaces - podcasting, blogging, freelance writing - and feeling a kindred spiritness about our work, even though our personal lives had never overlapped.

A lot of these online creators I met at conferences, where it’s just the norm to follow one another on Instagram after the briefest of get-to-know-you chit-chat. Then after said conferences, there’s often a genuine effort to read each other’s work, cheer on each other’s growth and success, and stay loosely but intentionally connected thereafter. Of course many of these ties do loosen and fade over time, but the ones that remain are powerful.

I’m not sure how to replicate this outside of Instagram. I hear Substack is a wonderful community for writers and so some of that same energy may migrate over to this space. But I wonder if it is, in the end, just a trade-off I have to live with. I hope for genuine professional connections as I begin to take on more freelance work locally; there will probably be a future in which I have colleagues or coworkers again. In the meantime, I look back really fondly at a time where the Internet generally and Instagram specifically were a source of authentic, powerful, important professional relationships for me.

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As I wrap up this series, 2025 is nearly upon us. I know many of you are thinking about habits and goals, what’s serving you and what isn’t, where your creativity comes from and what drains it, and also where to put those 138,289 photos you’ll take over the holiday break. This is my invitation to you to just take one small step in the direction that feels better, not worse - whatever that looks like for you.