I’m also “guilty” of loosing hours and hours to scrolling and feeling so upset with myself but I keep doing it. I have however begun to also challenge myself when out and about to put the phone down, look up and enjoy the view, people watching and being in the moment. I have even gone one step further - when I see a stylishly dressed person, I go up to them and tell them so. It always brings a smile to both of us and it’s a good motivator to keep the phone in my bag. I thoroughly enjoy reading your newsletters and look forward to many more from the real world.
That sounds like a smart challenge! I found the first few days really difficult to be without my phone. I kept reaching for it all the time. During my work commute it's been somewhat shocking to see that almost all of my fellow passengers have their eyes glued to their phones at all times. But every now and then I see someone who is present in the moment, more often it's elderly people.
I should definitely tell people I like their style more, in person! I try to do it every once in a while and people are always so pleased that someone noticed or said something.
I applaud this post and- frankly- feel relieved to read what you (and other commenters) have said because it validates me so much so someone who has struggled with IG. I spent about 3 years in the process of deleting my account- beginning with these thoughts, moving to scrolling but not posting, and then taking the final leap to deactivate my account.
Your quote; “We want to belong to a community, we want to be noticed, and we need the likes and the comments to feel validated” was the thing I struggled with a ton. More than that I struggled to enjoy style without feeling like I needed to purchase something I saw an influencer wearing. I still struggle to see how my favorite influencers (who I keep an eye on) rarely repeat clothes and are always suggesting something new.
I love your work to notice and appreciate style in real time as I have found it the most healing thing for my journey.
It's so inspiring to me that you eventually deactivated your IG account. The fact that it took you three years says a long about the type of hold that IG has on us. I've read in multiple sources that the people who develop/developed Meta products rarely use them themselves, or they don't allow their children to use them. They're just not very good for us.
I can relate to the feeling of needing to purchase something because of what another person was wearing. Thrift hauls have been the worst for me. I'd immediately start to wonder if I should go thrifting too, because other people found cool stuff.
Tiia you have perfectly captured what I have been feeling. My life is scrolling away and I’m feeling guilt and helplessness - and I’m going to do something about it too. I’m giving myself a months break and see where it leads me. Interesting times!
It can be such a time suck! I stopped posting pictures of my children online a few months ago and now find myself questioning the same thing as I don’t use a phone lens to capture our interactions. It’s odd to realize that motherhood through instagram can be a performance.
On a different note, using an app like Opal (not sponsored) has really helped forced me to limit my time because I can’t access the social media as easily. Which is great.
That's fascinating how posting about family and motherhood can become performative, too. I guess the performance can revolve around anything, no matter what the topic.
I've often considered using an app to curb my screen time, and I think I will do that in the future if I start to use IG again. Thanks for the tip!
Good for you, Tiia! I often think about taking break from social media, but it’s just so hard. I enjoy seeing other people’s style, interiors, animals so much. I also live in a fairly boring (fashion-wise) suburban area. It sounds like your shop area is magnificent, as far as people watching and style. I so envy that. Maybe you should start a street style photo blog. 🤓
I also struggle with posting on iG, I feel like I’m happier when I don’t think about getting dressed with regard for how it will be received on IG, but then I feel like I’m not contributing to the conversation. Lol. Looking forward to hearing how your time away is!
It seems to me that there's always more style out there if you sort of widen your scope of what style is. Ordinary people wear the most peculiar things sometimes, even if it's just a different hairstyle, an unusual pair of glasses, old jewelry... But yeah, people's style in the suburbs tends to be very low risk. Not much experimentation here, either!
We'll see how long I last without IG. I'm having the most awful FOMO today! I hope it gets easier soon.
Oh Tiia, I was reflecting on your email! It resonated with me a lot!
First of all I can’t believe the tasteless people in leggings and cropped hoodies are in Finland too, I thought styleless people are only in North America, oh boy!
I stopped posting a long time ago and found myself wearing totally different clothes like you said!
But doing that I was able to identify my style and stay true to myself.
If you decide to post less often or leave IG I’ll miss you but I’m happy with your newsletter, I found myself reading it a few times and meditating on it.
It’s a good question. I realized that I don’t have to show off anymore and started wearing my favorite clothes. Mostly jeans with sweaters or different jacket’s depending on the weather and white or stripe tees. I sold a lot of clothes that wasn’t “me”, but I wore it because I wanted to post a new content on IG.
Now I wear clothes that I’ve been wearing my entire life 😁 it was always jeans a white tee and a third piece like a jacket a sweater. It took me about a year to realize what my true style is.
And looking back on my photos from years ago, I wore more or less the same formula 😁 so I’m a hostage of habits I guess!
This is such a great piece. You’ve captured what I feel about Instagram. I think the base need of trying to find a community really resonates with me. And in an effort to do so, creating content to keep that “community” turns into a performance. If a post doesn’t get many likes, it sadly invalidates or causes me to question that I should post something different. IG was meant to be a space just for self expression, not a digital popularity contest. Thank you so much for posting this. I will be re-reading this again to serve as a reality check of what is really important. It gives me so much to think about.
I'm sorry I'm late to replying -- somehow your comment got lost from me!
Anyway, yes, I completely agree with you. Initially IG really felt like a great place for self expression. They really lost something special when they allowed advertising and made it a commercial platform. I understand why they had to do it, but the user experience changed fundamentally after that.
I'm so inspired by this move of yours! I've also been experiencing a kind of alienation after spending too much time on Instagram, and I feel much better about letting it go if the "thinking" part of what attracts me to people posting their outfits is accessible here on Substack.
I love the description of what you saw on your commute, so much more evocative than anything I could scroll past on IG. The feeling you had reminds me of why I started going to the library to work a couple of times a week, just to get out of the house and see real people, instead of spending all day on my computer in my home.
I’m excited to read whatever you choose to write about here; I’m also tired of the emptiness I feel after hours of scrolling social media and there’s has to be a much better feel to find inspiration and community.
As for dressing for social media, I think one reason I keep my accounts private and anonymous is because I feel like it allows me to set boundaries and prevent my identity from being too tied to views and likes. I also like posting outfits when I feel like I’ve hit a vibe in seeking, but mostly I value the memories (I sound so old...); when I look back on old outfits I can remember where I was going and what I liked at the time and it can trigger all kinds of reflections. Maybe there will be a bright side to all the hours we logged on social media...
I was just trying to figure out at what point I began to dress for IG, and when did the process become "contaminated". I know that I started to post outfits that I just felt happy in, but at some point things got turned around. I think I've been the happiest on IG when I had something like under 200 followers and I only followed a handful of people myself.
I value the memories, too. I was just thinking the other day how social media has replaced our photo albums. Wouldn't it be cool to actually have a physical photo album of your outfits? I love that idea.
You will be missed however I completely understand ( not that you need my understanding 🙃).
I am careful to use IG selectively as if it is a magazine, a window to a world beyond mine. However, I only follow around 100 people/ organizations at any given time and regularly unfollow without a second thought.
I also have certain times of day when I will pick up my IPad. I am probably unusual in that I rarely use my iPhone, I carry it if I need to make an emergency call although interestingly I never take it on long walks or hikes when I would be most likely to have an emergency!
I read somewhere to choose to do just one thing at a time. That includes morning coffee - I just enjoy my coffee, not looking at a book or newspaper ( in the past!) or iPad. Just truly enjoy that one thing whatever it is before moving on.
Anyway, good luck to you, I look forward to hearing your thoughts here❤️
Sounds like you're in an ideal place with IG! That's kind of how I'd like to use IG; like a magazine, but right now I need to go cold turkey for a while. It's a really good idea to unfollow any accounts that don't resonate, and limit the amount of accounts you follow. Maybe I'll get there one day!
I also love the thought of doing just one thing at a time. Johann Hari's book talks about this. Our brain is wired to handle just one task at a time, and multi-tasking actually forces our brain to switch between tasks constantly. That's what breaks our concentration.
I'm "guilty" of everything you have written here. The scrolling, the spending hours "socializing" or posting on IG, of failing to do other things that I deem more important (like spending time with friends, reading, painting) because I'm scrolling my life away. Recently I vowed to always carry a book with me so that when I start scrolling (or tapping through stories, as I do more often) too much to acknowledge that and switch to the book instead. So far it's worked pretty well. I guess I have two insights that are a bit more personal to me and differ from your experience that I'd like to share.
First is the "building outfits through the lens of IG." While it's true that I sometimes try to "pull an outfit" when what I'm really feeling like wearing is jeans and a t-shirt, the main reason I started posted on IG is that I *was* actually wearing cute outfits when going to an empty pandemic-induced office, when going for a walk by myself, etc. and wanted to share that. I personally think that the much-desired "dress for yourself" doesn't exist so we're always dressing with regards to whom we're meeting and where we're going. IG adds another layer to that but I'm not sure it's much worse, at least for me, simply because my outfits preceded my sharing.
The second is the socializing on IG. I realized I'm really not inclined to comment on people's stories and DMs (I have triple thoughts about this lengthy comment as well). That's because I'm feeling like I'm stealing people's time, making them feel like they have to respond me. And while I appreciate when people comment on *my* content because it makes me feel like people *offered* me their time, what you said about spending more time on days when sharing more made me double-think this dynamic. Because while we might have nice conversations, that's again time that might be spent another way, but more importantly it's time that you feel obliged to spend. You can always (theoretically) stop scrolling, but it's much harder to stop responding because it makes you feel like a bad person.
Anyway I'm looking forward to reading your thoughts here and a small part of me still hopes that you'll share your outfits from time to time here as well.
That's so interesting what you wrote about "outfits through the lens of IG" -- my outfits preceded my sharing, too! I'm not sure when I started to feel that it had switched around. For quite some time I was in a good place and just enjoyed sharing whatever it was that I wore. I also don't think I thought about my clothes nearly as much as I have been, for the past two years or so. I just enjoyed them. I followed fewer people and fewer people followed me, so sharing and being a part of the community took much less time and effort. Posting felt more spontaneous. Maybe the more involved you are on IG, the more it begins to mould you. Maybe then, like you said, you also begin to feel obliged to offer more content to your followers. You feel like you owe them, and the border between the personal and the public begins to blur. I read yesterday that influencers who have over 50K followers spend on average 9 hours a day on IG. 9 hours!!
The morphing or molding is definitely an interesting (and a bit alarming) effect!
The amount of time they spend on social media doesn't surprise me--after all, most of these influencers turn this into their full-time job so in this regard it's just like me spending 8h/day at my office job. That's what I always try to remember after I catch myself comparing myself to these influencers: they allocate more time, money and resources to some thing because that's their job! Not mine.
Very true! The weird thing about influencers is that their life is their job and their job is their life. I don't know how they do it, really. I've always felt the need to separate my work-self as well as my social media self from my personal life. Maybe that makes me more susceptible to experiencing anxiety around social media.
I feel similarly! I was on vacation in Jamaica visiting my family and had poor Wi-Fi. At first I was anxious about my downtime, but then it really just felt good to be in person and fill my downtime with even just looking out at a scene or walking over to a family member and talking. I’m back home now and it’s inspired me remain IRL and if I do shop, to do it in person.
That sounds amazing. It's like you almost stumbled upon a solution (the poor Wi-Fi on vacation), when maybe you didn't know that you needed it in the first place. IRL is an interesting place to be! And yes, I applaud your decision to shop in person! Brick-and-mortar shops will thank you!
Hi Tiia, I really enjoyed this post which I've now read several times since it came out. Mostly, just now I want to say how much I appreciate your Substack. You bring an authenticity and transparency that I appreciate around the complexity of fashion, style, IG, identity, dressing for ourselves vs. others or likes or outer recognition. I can simultaneously feel that I post on IG (1) to feel myself as a valued member of a community (2) to get validation for my style and myself (3) to be a part of the style conversation (4) to be seen (5) to motivate myself to wear something interesting. And as you and others have shared, that's complicated for one's self-esteem. Am I getting as many likes? Comments? Followers? Are my outfits interesting enough? Does my presence really matter? And it brings up self-consciousness/ criticism at times about my looks/ body/ face/ aging, etc. In many ways, I actually want a lot more than IG can offer. I don't just want visual affirmation of my outfits and existence. I want closer connection, vulnerability, intimacy, sharing, deeper friendship in a world that can feel too isolating. I can't replace those deeper desires for connection with IG, that I know, but it offers some taste of this. That being said, your Substack is a generous offering and a thoughtful, engaging, valuable read and makes our world feel just a bit smaller. Thank you.
The time I've spent away from IG has been eye-opening in many ways. What you said about closer connection, vulnerability, intimacy, sharing, deeper friendships... some forms of those things actually happen on IG. I notice now, being away from IG, that the connections we build there are real. There's just an additional weird layer of pressure that leads us to disconnecting from the world we live in, and it's a shame, because the best aspects of IG allow you to really feel less alone. I'm still not sure how to keep things balanced, how to stay connected in both worlds.
Agreed, it's a tough balance...between feeling less alone and the negative aspects of IG. Depends on the day for me, but today I'm feeling particularly grateful for these connections. In any case, I hope your time off IG is allowing you to engage more fully in the world we are living in—and that you're feeling nourished! <3
Well I failed miserably! However, I’ve just finished Stolen Focus and it’s given me a new lease of life (noting it’s not just technology that is doing this but, sheesh, Facebook!). So I’m Day 4 with no social media and it feels much better this time. Dare I say it, I’m more focused to move away from it?!
Stolen Focus is great, right? I'm finally starting to cope with the FOMO, and it took me weeks -- yikes! I'm still working on my ability to focus. Reading books has become easier; the first few days were just terrible and I kept having to read and re-read sentences and paragraphs because my mind wandered so much. It's a process!
I live in a lovely student town and work in a bigger city, in both places people tend to be very down to earth dress wise, and not at all fashion forward. Almost none of my friends is into fashion the way I am and so IG for me is a place to see interesting people, with unusual outfit ideas, and read about the thoughts behind them, like yours. For this I am hesitant to let go of it, although I know that I spend too much time there... On my commute I now read a real - printed - newspaper or a book, to reduce the screen time. Look forward to your experiences with going cold turkey, and hopefully interesting fashion musings on here!
The community aspect of IG is what I miss. Even though I'm finding a lot of interesting styles to look at IRL, I still miss the people I've gotten to know over the past few years.
I love that you use print media to reduce your screen time. I do that now, too, and it does feel more calming somehow.
I’m also “guilty” of loosing hours and hours to scrolling and feeling so upset with myself but I keep doing it. I have however begun to also challenge myself when out and about to put the phone down, look up and enjoy the view, people watching and being in the moment. I have even gone one step further - when I see a stylishly dressed person, I go up to them and tell them so. It always brings a smile to both of us and it’s a good motivator to keep the phone in my bag. I thoroughly enjoy reading your newsletters and look forward to many more from the real world.
That sounds like a smart challenge! I found the first few days really difficult to be without my phone. I kept reaching for it all the time. During my work commute it's been somewhat shocking to see that almost all of my fellow passengers have their eyes glued to their phones at all times. But every now and then I see someone who is present in the moment, more often it's elderly people.
I should definitely tell people I like their style more, in person! I try to do it every once in a while and people are always so pleased that someone noticed or said something.
I applaud this post and- frankly- feel relieved to read what you (and other commenters) have said because it validates me so much so someone who has struggled with IG. I spent about 3 years in the process of deleting my account- beginning with these thoughts, moving to scrolling but not posting, and then taking the final leap to deactivate my account.
Your quote; “We want to belong to a community, we want to be noticed, and we need the likes and the comments to feel validated” was the thing I struggled with a ton. More than that I struggled to enjoy style without feeling like I needed to purchase something I saw an influencer wearing. I still struggle to see how my favorite influencers (who I keep an eye on) rarely repeat clothes and are always suggesting something new.
I love your work to notice and appreciate style in real time as I have found it the most healing thing for my journey.
It's so inspiring to me that you eventually deactivated your IG account. The fact that it took you three years says a long about the type of hold that IG has on us. I've read in multiple sources that the people who develop/developed Meta products rarely use them themselves, or they don't allow their children to use them. They're just not very good for us.
I can relate to the feeling of needing to purchase something because of what another person was wearing. Thrift hauls have been the worst for me. I'd immediately start to wonder if I should go thrifting too, because other people found cool stuff.
Tiia you have perfectly captured what I have been feeling. My life is scrolling away and I’m feeling guilt and helplessness - and I’m going to do something about it too. I’m giving myself a months break and see where it leads me. Interesting times!
A break sounds like a good idea. My first day without any IG is feeling quite painful, I'm experiencing so much FOMO! I hope it gets easier soon.
It can be such a time suck! I stopped posting pictures of my children online a few months ago and now find myself questioning the same thing as I don’t use a phone lens to capture our interactions. It’s odd to realize that motherhood through instagram can be a performance.
On a different note, using an app like Opal (not sponsored) has really helped forced me to limit my time because I can’t access the social media as easily. Which is great.
That's fascinating how posting about family and motherhood can become performative, too. I guess the performance can revolve around anything, no matter what the topic.
I've often considered using an app to curb my screen time, and I think I will do that in the future if I start to use IG again. Thanks for the tip!
Good for you, Tiia! I often think about taking break from social media, but it’s just so hard. I enjoy seeing other people’s style, interiors, animals so much. I also live in a fairly boring (fashion-wise) suburban area. It sounds like your shop area is magnificent, as far as people watching and style. I so envy that. Maybe you should start a street style photo blog. 🤓
I also struggle with posting on iG, I feel like I’m happier when I don’t think about getting dressed with regard for how it will be received on IG, but then I feel like I’m not contributing to the conversation. Lol. Looking forward to hearing how your time away is!
It seems to me that there's always more style out there if you sort of widen your scope of what style is. Ordinary people wear the most peculiar things sometimes, even if it's just a different hairstyle, an unusual pair of glasses, old jewelry... But yeah, people's style in the suburbs tends to be very low risk. Not much experimentation here, either!
We'll see how long I last without IG. I'm having the most awful FOMO today! I hope it gets easier soon.
Oh Tiia, I was reflecting on your email! It resonated with me a lot!
First of all I can’t believe the tasteless people in leggings and cropped hoodies are in Finland too, I thought styleless people are only in North America, oh boy!
I stopped posting a long time ago and found myself wearing totally different clothes like you said!
But doing that I was able to identify my style and stay true to myself.
If you decide to post less often or leave IG I’ll miss you but I’m happy with your newsletter, I found myself reading it a few times and meditating on it.
Please keep writing you are so good at it!
Leggings and cropped hoodies are taking over the world! It's kind of sad, but hey, if it makes people happy, more power to them! :)
I'm curious: how has your style changed since you stopped posting on IG? Do you buy clothes differently now?
It’s a good question. I realized that I don’t have to show off anymore and started wearing my favorite clothes. Mostly jeans with sweaters or different jacket’s depending on the weather and white or stripe tees. I sold a lot of clothes that wasn’t “me”, but I wore it because I wanted to post a new content on IG.
Now I wear clothes that I’ve been wearing my entire life 😁 it was always jeans a white tee and a third piece like a jacket a sweater. It took me about a year to realize what my true style is.
And looking back on my photos from years ago, I wore more or less the same formula 😁 so I’m a hostage of habits I guess!
This is such a great piece. You’ve captured what I feel about Instagram. I think the base need of trying to find a community really resonates with me. And in an effort to do so, creating content to keep that “community” turns into a performance. If a post doesn’t get many likes, it sadly invalidates or causes me to question that I should post something different. IG was meant to be a space just for self expression, not a digital popularity contest. Thank you so much for posting this. I will be re-reading this again to serve as a reality check of what is really important. It gives me so much to think about.
I'm sorry I'm late to replying -- somehow your comment got lost from me!
Anyway, yes, I completely agree with you. Initially IG really felt like a great place for self expression. They really lost something special when they allowed advertising and made it a commercial platform. I understand why they had to do it, but the user experience changed fundamentally after that.
I'm so inspired by this move of yours! I've also been experiencing a kind of alienation after spending too much time on Instagram, and I feel much better about letting it go if the "thinking" part of what attracts me to people posting their outfits is accessible here on Substack.
Alienation is a good world to describe the feeling I get from IG, too. You're definitely not alone!
I love the description of what you saw on your commute, so much more evocative than anything I could scroll past on IG. The feeling you had reminds me of why I started going to the library to work a couple of times a week, just to get out of the house and see real people, instead of spending all day on my computer in my home.
I’m excited to read whatever you choose to write about here; I’m also tired of the emptiness I feel after hours of scrolling social media and there’s has to be a much better feel to find inspiration and community.
As for dressing for social media, I think one reason I keep my accounts private and anonymous is because I feel like it allows me to set boundaries and prevent my identity from being too tied to views and likes. I also like posting outfits when I feel like I’ve hit a vibe in seeking, but mostly I value the memories (I sound so old...); when I look back on old outfits I can remember where I was going and what I liked at the time and it can trigger all kinds of reflections. Maybe there will be a bright side to all the hours we logged on social media...
I was just trying to figure out at what point I began to dress for IG, and when did the process become "contaminated". I know that I started to post outfits that I just felt happy in, but at some point things got turned around. I think I've been the happiest on IG when I had something like under 200 followers and I only followed a handful of people myself.
I value the memories, too. I was just thinking the other day how social media has replaced our photo albums. Wouldn't it be cool to actually have a physical photo album of your outfits? I love that idea.
Ooooo shall we bring back Polaroids?
You will be missed however I completely understand ( not that you need my understanding 🙃).
I am careful to use IG selectively as if it is a magazine, a window to a world beyond mine. However, I only follow around 100 people/ organizations at any given time and regularly unfollow without a second thought.
I also have certain times of day when I will pick up my IPad. I am probably unusual in that I rarely use my iPhone, I carry it if I need to make an emergency call although interestingly I never take it on long walks or hikes when I would be most likely to have an emergency!
I read somewhere to choose to do just one thing at a time. That includes morning coffee - I just enjoy my coffee, not looking at a book or newspaper ( in the past!) or iPad. Just truly enjoy that one thing whatever it is before moving on.
Anyway, good luck to you, I look forward to hearing your thoughts here❤️
Sounds like you're in an ideal place with IG! That's kind of how I'd like to use IG; like a magazine, but right now I need to go cold turkey for a while. It's a really good idea to unfollow any accounts that don't resonate, and limit the amount of accounts you follow. Maybe I'll get there one day!
I also love the thought of doing just one thing at a time. Johann Hari's book talks about this. Our brain is wired to handle just one task at a time, and multi-tasking actually forces our brain to switch between tasks constantly. That's what breaks our concentration.
wow, great post and will resonate with lots of us!
Thank you! <3
I'm "guilty" of everything you have written here. The scrolling, the spending hours "socializing" or posting on IG, of failing to do other things that I deem more important (like spending time with friends, reading, painting) because I'm scrolling my life away. Recently I vowed to always carry a book with me so that when I start scrolling (or tapping through stories, as I do more often) too much to acknowledge that and switch to the book instead. So far it's worked pretty well. I guess I have two insights that are a bit more personal to me and differ from your experience that I'd like to share.
First is the "building outfits through the lens of IG." While it's true that I sometimes try to "pull an outfit" when what I'm really feeling like wearing is jeans and a t-shirt, the main reason I started posted on IG is that I *was* actually wearing cute outfits when going to an empty pandemic-induced office, when going for a walk by myself, etc. and wanted to share that. I personally think that the much-desired "dress for yourself" doesn't exist so we're always dressing with regards to whom we're meeting and where we're going. IG adds another layer to that but I'm not sure it's much worse, at least for me, simply because my outfits preceded my sharing.
The second is the socializing on IG. I realized I'm really not inclined to comment on people's stories and DMs (I have triple thoughts about this lengthy comment as well). That's because I'm feeling like I'm stealing people's time, making them feel like they have to respond me. And while I appreciate when people comment on *my* content because it makes me feel like people *offered* me their time, what you said about spending more time on days when sharing more made me double-think this dynamic. Because while we might have nice conversations, that's again time that might be spent another way, but more importantly it's time that you feel obliged to spend. You can always (theoretically) stop scrolling, but it's much harder to stop responding because it makes you feel like a bad person.
Anyway I'm looking forward to reading your thoughts here and a small part of me still hopes that you'll share your outfits from time to time here as well.
That's so interesting what you wrote about "outfits through the lens of IG" -- my outfits preceded my sharing, too! I'm not sure when I started to feel that it had switched around. For quite some time I was in a good place and just enjoyed sharing whatever it was that I wore. I also don't think I thought about my clothes nearly as much as I have been, for the past two years or so. I just enjoyed them. I followed fewer people and fewer people followed me, so sharing and being a part of the community took much less time and effort. Posting felt more spontaneous. Maybe the more involved you are on IG, the more it begins to mould you. Maybe then, like you said, you also begin to feel obliged to offer more content to your followers. You feel like you owe them, and the border between the personal and the public begins to blur. I read yesterday that influencers who have over 50K followers spend on average 9 hours a day on IG. 9 hours!!
The morphing or molding is definitely an interesting (and a bit alarming) effect!
The amount of time they spend on social media doesn't surprise me--after all, most of these influencers turn this into their full-time job so in this regard it's just like me spending 8h/day at my office job. That's what I always try to remember after I catch myself comparing myself to these influencers: they allocate more time, money and resources to some thing because that's their job! Not mine.
Very true! The weird thing about influencers is that their life is their job and their job is their life. I don't know how they do it, really. I've always felt the need to separate my work-self as well as my social media self from my personal life. Maybe that makes me more susceptible to experiencing anxiety around social media.
I feel similarly! I was on vacation in Jamaica visiting my family and had poor Wi-Fi. At first I was anxious about my downtime, but then it really just felt good to be in person and fill my downtime with even just looking out at a scene or walking over to a family member and talking. I’m back home now and it’s inspired me remain IRL and if I do shop, to do it in person.
That sounds amazing. It's like you almost stumbled upon a solution (the poor Wi-Fi on vacation), when maybe you didn't know that you needed it in the first place. IRL is an interesting place to be! And yes, I applaud your decision to shop in person! Brick-and-mortar shops will thank you!
Hi Tiia, I really enjoyed this post which I've now read several times since it came out. Mostly, just now I want to say how much I appreciate your Substack. You bring an authenticity and transparency that I appreciate around the complexity of fashion, style, IG, identity, dressing for ourselves vs. others or likes or outer recognition. I can simultaneously feel that I post on IG (1) to feel myself as a valued member of a community (2) to get validation for my style and myself (3) to be a part of the style conversation (4) to be seen (5) to motivate myself to wear something interesting. And as you and others have shared, that's complicated for one's self-esteem. Am I getting as many likes? Comments? Followers? Are my outfits interesting enough? Does my presence really matter? And it brings up self-consciousness/ criticism at times about my looks/ body/ face/ aging, etc. In many ways, I actually want a lot more than IG can offer. I don't just want visual affirmation of my outfits and existence. I want closer connection, vulnerability, intimacy, sharing, deeper friendship in a world that can feel too isolating. I can't replace those deeper desires for connection with IG, that I know, but it offers some taste of this. That being said, your Substack is a generous offering and a thoughtful, engaging, valuable read and makes our world feel just a bit smaller. Thank you.
Thank you so much for this, Lisa. <3
The time I've spent away from IG has been eye-opening in many ways. What you said about closer connection, vulnerability, intimacy, sharing, deeper friendships... some forms of those things actually happen on IG. I notice now, being away from IG, that the connections we build there are real. There's just an additional weird layer of pressure that leads us to disconnecting from the world we live in, and it's a shame, because the best aspects of IG allow you to really feel less alone. I'm still not sure how to keep things balanced, how to stay connected in both worlds.
Agreed, it's a tough balance...between feeling less alone and the negative aspects of IG. Depends on the day for me, but today I'm feeling particularly grateful for these connections. In any case, I hope your time off IG is allowing you to engage more fully in the world we are living in—and that you're feeling nourished! <3
Well I failed miserably! However, I’ve just finished Stolen Focus and it’s given me a new lease of life (noting it’s not just technology that is doing this but, sheesh, Facebook!). So I’m Day 4 with no social media and it feels much better this time. Dare I say it, I’m more focused to move away from it?!
Stolen Focus is great, right? I'm finally starting to cope with the FOMO, and it took me weeks -- yikes! I'm still working on my ability to focus. Reading books has become easier; the first few days were just terrible and I kept having to read and re-read sentences and paragraphs because my mind wandered so much. It's a process!
I live in a lovely student town and work in a bigger city, in both places people tend to be very down to earth dress wise, and not at all fashion forward. Almost none of my friends is into fashion the way I am and so IG for me is a place to see interesting people, with unusual outfit ideas, and read about the thoughts behind them, like yours. For this I am hesitant to let go of it, although I know that I spend too much time there... On my commute I now read a real - printed - newspaper or a book, to reduce the screen time. Look forward to your experiences with going cold turkey, and hopefully interesting fashion musings on here!
The community aspect of IG is what I miss. Even though I'm finding a lot of interesting styles to look at IRL, I still miss the people I've gotten to know over the past few years.
I love that you use print media to reduce your screen time. I do that now, too, and it does feel more calming somehow.