I have a love-hate relationship with my phone. To be honest, it’s more like tolerate-hate. I love that it lets me talk to my friends and family, I hate…basically everything else about it.

Really, I’m the ideal candidate for a traditional landline. Minus the fact that one, my house doesn’t have a phone jack anymore, and two, I have to keep a smartphone on me for restaurant menus, parking meters, and public transit.

But I did take one step that made use my phone both more and less: I told my friends I was going off of social media, and to please text or call me. I’d be using my phone to talk more, and to be on social media less.

There was a part of me that was worried I’d lose moments of connection with them if they could no longer send me memes and posts on Instagram.

And while it’s true that I don’t have real life connection with some people any more, it was really just the folks whose relationship with me was nothing more than a “heart” reaction or a response to a Story. The rest of ’em, well, they texted me.

Why I Left Instagram

I still remember the first time I logged on to Instagram: it was around 2012, and I was at the laundromat. Instagram felt delightful — so many fun pictures to see from my friends and from photographers who I followed.

But you know how the story goes, you’ve lived it. Meta bought the app and, well, now there’s an awful lot of ads.

About 10 years after my first foray onto Instagram, I realized that I was trapped in a little sort of bubble. I felt like I was socially engaged, tapped into my community—but there were a lot of things I only experienced through Instagram. And while some of those things were good, there was a lot of mental noise. Weird feelings around validation. What was once a place for me to look a a highlight reel of pictures from around the world now felt like a chore.

Planning an Exit From the Algorithm

Quitting Instagram (and similar social media platforms) can feel borderline impossible. My previous experience with leaving Facebook showed me that it can be done, though, my God, was that ever an obstacle course.

Still, I felt like I was planning a mission (of the government operative kind, not the religious kind) in the period of time leading up to abandoning my Instagram accounts forever. Can you pull the plug immediately and abruptly? Cold turkey? Yes, and in retrospect, I recommend you do.

If that feels too much, I get it. I used a tiered process, and it’s easy enough for anyone to replicate. But you have to really delete your whole account for this to work: not just the app (you’ll be back to scrolling Insta through the web browser in no time, guaranteed).

Step 1: Cull the list of accounts you follow

Start by going through the list of accounts you follow and deleting any that belong to brands or to people who you don’t regularly see in your Instagram feed or interact with. You’ll probably be restricted to deleting a handful per day, as Instagram assumes you’re a bot unfollowing accounts en masse after a certain point. It’s okay if this takes you a week (or two!) to do — it’s setting the stage for the rest of your Instagram App Divorce.

Once you’ve removed companies and people you don’t actually see/talk to/care about from your list, you’ll be left with a smaller list that we’ll call your core network.

Step 2: Go right to the source

Look at this core network list; how many of the accounts belong to a writer, artist, creator, influencer, or publication whose Instagram content you like? While it feels like Instagram may be The Place to follow them, I promise you it’s not the only place.

• For artists, writers, musicians, and creators: There’s a strong, I’d say 90% chance, all of these people have email lists. Find their websites. Join the list. Any major announcements should go out here as well as social, so you won’t be left in the dark. If they have a podcast and you like audio, follow that, too.
• For publications: Go to their websites and scroll down to the footer. Look for the letters “RSS” or an icon that looks like a white and orange Wi-Fi symbol tilted on its side. RSS is a feed that automatically updates each time the site publishes a new article or blog post. While use of RSS has gone a bit by the wayside over the years, this was how many of us kept up with stuff in a pre-Facebook-algorithm era. To leverage this now, all you need is the RSS feed (click “RSS” or the logo, then copy the URL that opens up in a new window) and an RSS reader — I use Lire on iOS. Plug the URL into the RSS reader voilà: you have a customized feed of your favorite blogs.

The beauty of the RSS feed is that it gives you updates in a scrollable feed, but once you’ve read the available content, you’re done. No algorithm, no doom scrolling.

Step 3: Pick a date you’ll exit Instagram

This feels very formal, but it helps to give yourself a deadline: I recommend one week from today.

And don’t worry, nothing you still have to do on Instagram will take more than a week to wrap up (assuming you’re closing down a personal account).

Step 4: Tell your connections

You can choose to do this in one or two phases (I did two).

• Phase 1: Post a story or feed graphic announcing that you’re leaving Instagram on X date and say how people can find you online — be it via another platform like Bluesky, your website, etc. This is how your general followers (not your close friends) can still get in touch with you.
• Phase 2: Message the people you’d actually like to continue conversing with and say “Hey! I decided to close down my Instagram on [DATE]. If you want to chat any time after that, just hit me up at [insert phone number / Signal username / WhatsApp details / email].

By sending this message several days before you actually delete your account, you’re giving the other person a reasonable amount of time to see the message notification and read what you sent.

Step 5: Accept that most people won’t notice your account is gone

This stage feels kinda uncomfortable. But it’s true — most of the people you’re connected with on Instagram won’t notice that you’re gone. Like, I highly doubt that my friend’s sister ever noticed I bounced, after all, if she really needs to ask me something, she’ll have my friend text me.

If you’ve had any longtime Internet friends, you’ll have to decide if you want to give them your alternate contact details or let this chapter in your life close. They may or may not miss you. You may or may not miss them. That’s okay either way.

The Instagram algorithm is cultivated in a way that makes us feel like we’re so central in everyone’s lives, but — the accounts you follow aren’t central in yours. If your old roommate’s cousin who you haven’t seen in ten years stopped posting one day, it might momentarily occur to you that you hadn’t seen her face in a while, and then the moment would pass.

The algorithm was never really about bringing you closer to others, it was about bringing more revenue to the makers of the app through your time spent scrolling past advertisements.

Step 6: Do it. Pull the plug.

Finally, you just have to do it. On the day you said you would. Go into your account settings and delete (not just deactivate) your account.

If you feel a worrisome sense in your gut that you’ve just severed all ties forever! go ahead and message some of your friends on iMessage / Signal / WhatsApp / email. Say “hey! I did it! Pulled the plug on IG feels weird but — kinda good?”

The people who you had real connection with beyond a few Reel replies and comments, those people — even if you don’t hang out in person — they will text you. FaceTime you. Ping you on Discord.

The Algorithm Suppressed You, But You Aren’t Forgettable

In my case, I found out that not only did those friends still text/call/message me, but they even kept me in the loop with the best content they would’ve shared with me through an Instagram DM anyway. It takes my friends no more time to snap a screenshot and toss it in a text (or even a screen recording — one friend screenshots funny posts and comments that she wants to share with me) than it did to share a post through Instagram.

And honestly, it warms my heart in a way that an Instagram DM didn’t. Even though it’s an equally quick process to send in a text, I know that my friends saw something, thought of me, and then thought to take a moment and send it to me. It’s just…nice.

And I of course return the favor, though not with Instagram posts. If I see a funny card in a store, a crazy looking bird, an absurd blurb on the back of a paperback book in a Free Little Library that makes me think of a friend, I snap a photo. I send them a voice message recounting a funny story from my day.

But quitting social media means that my friends will DEFINITELY see the content I send them; it won’t be pushed aside by the algorithm. Best yet, I don’t have to deal with anyone trying to sell me “tarnish-free jewelry” or weight loss teas in between life updates. And the silence that brings to my brain is golden.

Tell Your Friends To Text You: On Quitting Instagram was originally published in Tired of Tech on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.