I made an Instagram account in August 2025 (started actively using it in November 2025) and collected some thoughts around using the app. Full disclosure that I am not a newbie to Instagram; I first joined it circa 2013 and used it quite a lot until early 2018 when I permanently deleted my account.

I will caveat by saying that I understand majority of the text below is fairly obvious to someone who has used Instagram their entire life and I’m about to get hit with the “tech bro discovers social media1 is for socializing” troll reactions/comments. I welcome them.

Benefits

Social life boost

I feel that my social life has improved tremendously

  • It is so much easier to stay in touch with someone over Instagram vs. via phone numbers since people post stories/posts you can react to and whatnot, which makes it easier to reach out
  • Sending reels and memes to people you enjoy talking to keeps the relationship fresh.

Network

It is easier to keep a network this way. You get to see what mutuals you have with newly-made connections which can be a conversation starter. It has also become a lot easier to date since you get to build social proof. Potential partners are much warmer to you if you already have some mutuals.

Relatability

Ironically, I’ve found that it has also become easier to relate to people in the real world. Since you are in the loop with all the latest news and how the general public perceives it. For example, within a few minutes of talking to someone new, you can make an educated inference on their media diet and drop an edgy Netanyahu joke that would instantly make the conversation more enjoyable. Also, you can share reels and memes.

I also think my sense of humour has improved a fair bit.

Fashion

I am yet to truly experience this but I think I have a better sense of what constitutes as good fashion. One under-appreciated benefit of being chronically online is that you get exposed to literally all kinds of everything including style and fashion.

  • It makes it easier to find inspiration for your personal style and what may work given your features. You also get exposed to so many people that you inadvertently find people who look like you, that are pulling off a better look than you, which means you can copy them and try it out for yourself.
  • I’ve become a lot more open-minded about fashion/styles. Some of the ridiculous outfits I used to see down the street are no longer so ridiculous to me. When I see someone with an idiosyncratic outfit, I sometimes think they are just a lot more cosmopolitan than I am. And who knows, maybe we’ll all be wearing that in 10 years.

Downsides

Doomscrolling

Doomscrolling is an insane time sink! I definitely underestimated how addictive Instagram can be. The speed at which the algorithm learns what you like is frighteningly fast, and the accuracy of the suggested content you get is also very uncanny. When I last used the app in 2018, the algorithms were nowhere near this good (or fast!). I can’t even decide what’s more impressive, the speed or the accuracy but I will say Meta’s ML spend is very high ROI.

One of the reasons why my relationship with social media soured back in 2018 was because I learnt of the incentives behind them. Prompted by the popular slogan: “If the product is free, you’re the product”, I came to understand that social media companies are just advertising companies that use engagement numbers to set higher ad prices (and thus make more money). This is one of my first encounters with the sharp canines of capitalism that will chew through anything that stands in the way of profit maximization; including your attention span!

I’ll add a side note here that Instagram does not count as entertainment. I had a lengthy discussion with my sister not too long ago where she argued that she uses social media as a way to entertain herself before she goes to bed. I gawked at this at the time but I have actually heard similar takes from other friends who say that they doomscroll at the end of the day as a substitute for watching a show/reading etc. I have unintentionally experimented with this and I did not find doomscrolling to be a restful activity at all. At the end of my doomscrolling sessions, I usually feel like my senses are heightened (probably because of all the triggering content) and I often find it harder to sleep after. In fact, I have taken this to the extreme at times and used Instagram as caffeine after a bad night’s sleep. In case you are curious, it doesn’t work very well.

FOMO

Career FOMO

As much as you may try and avoid it, the sinking feeling that you are not doing enough is pretty brutal. This is probably just selection bias, where the content that is most likely to get popular is content that features outlier events (e.g. 25 yr-olds earning 500k as quants in NYC, 26 year olds running businesses making $10m ARR, the retired 28 year old Thailand-maxxer etc.) but it is hard for the human brain to separate these events from reality and thus hard to avoid comparison.

Personal FOMO

I have found myself sitting in my house at 7 pm on a Friday thinking I’m a loser because it feels like everyone else is doing something more interesting. This is not something I experienced much in the past. I used to be happy to be alone on a Friday night cause it meant I could divert my attention to doing something I enjoy like reading or writing. But now I feel like I’m watching an hourglass and I only have so much left before it’s too late and I’m bald and skinny fat and all my friends are now married and I can’t even go out anymore. This is a gross over-exaggeration but you catch my drift.

Watching other people FOMO

Adjacent to the point above, I have a feeling that other people have a similar experience and you can almost secretly tell from their activity. I call this class of people the lurkers. People who give the illusion that they are not online but constantly are. They will view your story 13s after you post it but have never posted anything themselves. When you’re scrolling through the “Friends” tab on Reels, you will see their likes splattered all over that feed but they never comment. They leave evidence of their existence but not too much. They’re like a cat walking in the snow. They leave a trail but barely. They’re lurking. Sometimes I’m a lurker. Which is why I understand what it feels like to be one living vicariously through other people. Sometimes we’re all lurkers.

Being more intentional

When I deleted my Instagram account the first time round, I thought it would be the last I saw of it but over the years I yearned for a better way to keep in touch with people without using the array of poison that is [Instagram, TikTok, X]. I tried taking phone numbers the old school way but:

  1. It is very odd to text someone you just met but don’t know very well yet
  2. It is very hard to keep in touch with someone you’d like to learn more about by sending them a text every ~3-6 months since you either forget or it just becomes too weird. As I write this I realize maybe some of this is my own self-defeating ideology but this was my experience

I went with Instagram because of it’s ubiquity and because I thought it would be the easiest to tame. One of my major regrets with my first 5 year bout with social media was that I was pretty reckless with it i.e. I came in with no plan and fell prey to the almighty algorithm. I decided that this time around I’d be more intentional with my social media usage, and perhaps it’s important to define what that means.

Connect about something i.e. art

Social media can be a good avenue to connect with people about various art and other forms of media I enjoy i.e. primarily books, music, movies Just by taking pictures/screenshots of some book/movie/album I enjoy and putting it on my story, I could find people who are have similar tastes as I do that I am not as close with, and that could open up more interesting conversations and fulfilling relationships.

Anti-FOMO

I do not want to post stories of all the fun and interesting things I am doing with my life because this will introduce FOMO in some unknown audience member. My plan is to use stories to publish [art I enjoy] like described above. As for the posts that go under my profile, I am not sure what to do about these: my current idea is to use it as a sort of portfolio where I can share some pictures of me and perhaps some highlights like travel pics. I want them to serve as more of an introduction to me for someone who has never seen my profile before and thus knows very little about me. This will evolve with time.

Conclusion

Overall I feel like I have a good plan with my social media use this time. I am enjoying (what is in my view) decent consumer surplus from using the apps. I do understand that my time and attention are very valuable

References

  1. I am using social media and Instagram interchangeably throughout this blogpost. ↩︎