Instagram is Like a Bad Friend

that you can't figure out how to leave behind.

Still from Heathers (1988) dir. Michael Lehmann

How many times have you found yourself wasting time with people you knew were entirely wrong for you? Chances are, for the majority of us, quite often. Unless you were born with impervious powers of inherent self-worth, it’s difficult to avoid. The experiences we have in our formative years have the potential to manifest as shame, unknowingly making us targets for those who speak fluently in the art of toxicity.

I was a strange kid. I had dark, bushy eyebrows and a shadow of peach fuzz on my upper lip, and my hair fell almost to my knees. I made up ridiculous games that made no sense. I adamantly believed fairies were real. There was also a period in elementary school when I would stuff a stream of toilet paper down the back of my pants and gallop around the playground, pretending I was a horse with my friends. I understand why I was the target of so many jokes. And what’s funny is that later in life, all the same physical attributes and characteristics—the eyebrows, the hair, the faint mustache, even the “eccentric” behavior I never fully shook—have not only become socially accepted but, dare I say, valued. What a turn of events that was.

I vividly remember sitting in my sixth-grade classroom, learning about Constantinople, vaguely aware that two people I sat next to were giggling to themselves. A boy I knew, who I believed to be my friend (I weep for poor, sweet grade school Kait), kept calling me “must.”

I was confused as to why, and innocently (foolishly) asked what it meant, to which he bluntly replied: “it’s because you have a mustache,” immediately going back to being their unaffected young boy selves, unaware of the slow horror that made its way through my body as I realized I had been the butt of their joke.

This is shame. Those suppressed memories lodged in the folds of our minds, hidden away because they are too painful to relive and remember. That story no longer hurts me, but ten or fifteen years ago it certainly did. I cringed and winced when I remembered it, feeling that familiar sensation of shame permeate my body, rewiring my brain and teaching me to avoid feeling that way at all costs. I began shaving my legs very young as a result of this, waxing the peach fuzz above my lip and in between my eyebrows, straightening the unruly waves of my hair. I was mortified by any hair on my body that wasn’t on my head, and even that hair endured some unnecessary heat-exposure and cruelty. I thought, if I could eradicate it all, I would finally feel beautiful and worthy.

These experiences that live so deep in the recesses of our minds, the ones we’ve tucked away and hidden from the world, are unfortunately the experiences that end up molding many of our adult behaviors. I spent a majority of my life after that craving acceptance, wishing I looked like other girls. I hadn’t yet realized that looking “different” was actually something to be desired. It’s a good thing that we don’t look like everyone else—that’s what makes us special. Unfortunately, when we’re young, it’s hard to believe this.

My insecurities led me to spend most of my life seeking approval from mean-spirited “friends” and people that clearly did not want me to be around. I often found myself amidst friend groups who were already very close with one another, but allowed me to tag along for whatever reason. At lunchtime or sleepovers my words would often hang in the air unaddressed while my “friends” exchanged slight, almost imperceptible glances with one another—a cardinal sin, possibly the worst thing you can do to a highly-sensitive neurodiverse child. These behaviors teach you to keep quiet, and that sharing parts of yourself isn’t safe or welcomed.

Still from Jawbreaker (1999) dir. Darren Stein

It took me a long time to realize that my shame and the experiences I faced as a child ended up determining a lot of my social circles in teenage years and early adulthood. While I was much better at avoiding those who were overtly mean, I still had those people-pleasing, “love me” tendencies that drew me toward those who had hidden desires to crush the spirits of people like me. I have a feeling that, unbeknownst to even them, their behaviors sought to keep me small and insignificant.

When Instagram came about, it didn’t take long to get me hooked. It preyed upon my desires for love and acceptance and sunk its claws into me around 19-20 years old. I spent years and years growing an audience, which became a small microcosm of the same dynamics and experiences I faced in the non-digital world. I discovered I could shape-shift and become whatever I wanted, please whomever I wanted—it was a dangerous thing to partake in at such a young age. Homogeneity was rewarded and ingenuity was punished. To be different, inventive, creative, to draw attention to yourself, and god forbid, outshine anyone with your talents, was treason. Do you see what I am getting at here? Nearly every dynamic in our lives has taught us to hide, and yet we wonder why we are so afraid to do anything creative or take chances on ourselves. Most of the time, the people around us didn’t allow us to.

Cassidy Frost recently posted about how Instagram often leaves you with very little reward compared to how many hours we spend “strategizing” and thinking about it. What does all that effort leave you with, and did you really gain anything from it? Odds are, unless you have an extremely engaged following or are a celebrity of some kind, the investment hasn’t amounted to much. All the time we put into these platforms that clearly don’t want us (unless we spend cold hard cash on “boosted posts” and advertising, of course) and for what? Surely we have to reach a point where we realize something isn’t working, yet we continue to go back to the drawing board day after day, trying to work out what we can do to get eyes back on ourselves, to win the approval and admiration of those around us. This is almost exactly how it feels to be stuck in a toxic friendship. Why do we keep going back?

Gossip Girl (2007-2012)

Frost suggests that we don’t have to, and I am beginning to agree. Only I didn’t really think about this as a valid option until recently. We are programmed to believe that all success stems from the success we garner on a particular platform (these days, Instagram & TikTok) and we forget all the other possibilities. What if we just said “screw it” and stopped? What happens then? Nothing, actually. The difference is that now you have free time and energy to invest back into your creative pursuits. That same energy you once spent brainstorming ideas, writing copy and editing Reels that only end up being watched and liked by 25 people is now being funneled into something useful and fulfilling.

I think I’ve reached the point where I am ready to give up. No matter what I do, I just feel terrible and useless whenever I open that app. Any desire to grow or engage is wiped out every time a post of mine goes completely unseen by my followers. My most recent post got a whopping total of 21 likes, and I have 13k followers. How in the world does that make any sense? Furthermore, why is this the current strategy to get people to keep using the app? With satisfaction at an all time low, I have a feeling they are driving away more people than they keep.

I told Ed the other day while we were walking the dogs that I cannot stop writing. It’s just pouring out of me. All I want to do is write, and I spend most of my day in front of the computer, typing and typing, because my hands can’t write fast enough to keep up with my brain. Pen and paper have become obsolete. I’ve started about ten different essays here in the last week or so. Part of it is because work is slow and I only have one client and I’m on a break from school, but another part is because Instagram is no longer occupying such a large space in my thoughts. That real estate has been replaced with something else: new ideas for songs, new essays and pieces to write, the urge to make photographs again. Finding that creative fire again is invaluable. It may ebb and flow, but it is back for me with such a force that I don’t want to let anything else get in the way of it again. I lived my life in a state of uninspired apathy for so long. It didn’t ebb and flow there, it was just completely devoid of it.

We have a choice. Do we continue investing time and energy into these things (social platforms, friendships, etc) that continue to drain us, or do we figure out another way forward? Yes, it’s scary to consider a different path because we don’t know what it looks like. I’ve said it before, but we will usually vote in favor of a familiar hell over the unknown simply because we know what it looks like—we can predict and anticipate whatever comes next. But that’s not where creativity lives. It isn’t where true connection and joy lives. It isn’t where fulfillment lives.

It is imperative that we scrounge up the courage to follow that path to the unknown that leads to the house of someone, or something, new. To bravely knock on the door and see if perhaps what we are looking for lives behind it. That elusive fire, that connection we crave, that sense of fulfillment we have chased for so long. It might live behind that door, it might not. But we first need to open ourselves to and be okay with the possibility of disappointment without letting it kill our motivation to continue, and that often requires leaving things behind. Shedding layers, outdated situations, and old dynamics that kept us small—piling on weight until we are immobile.

Instagram doesn’t care about you. Those toxic friends don’t either. While you were excitedly talking about this new thing you were doing that lit you up and filled you with so much joy, they were sharing a miserable glance over their cocktail glasses, silently praying for your downfall. It’s time to move on, babe. Your happiness and your potential for self-actualization kind of depends on it.

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