Why I Ditched Instagram (and Why Google Might Be Next)

Three and a half years. That’s how long it’s been since I last opened Instagram. Friends still ask why I ghosted the app, especially since my blog is full of photos of landscapes, animals, and the occasional latte. It wasn’t a dramatic breakup at first; I just felt drained. Every time I tried to browse nature shots, the algorithm shoved cringe Reels and brain‑rot content into my eyeballs. Eventually I realised the platform itself was rewiring my brain. Here’s what convinced me to step back and why I’m writing about it now.

The dopamine trap: infinite scrolling and algorithmic nudging

When Instagram launched, it was mostly about sharing snapshots. Over the last decade, it morphed into a machine that thrives on micro‑engagement. Research on the design of social media shows that features like infinite scrolling deliberately tap into psychological vulnerabilities. One paper describes how endless feeds exploit the Zeigarnik effect (we remember incomplete tasks better than completed ones) and the dopamine feedback loop to keep us scrolling. The combination of auto‑refreshing feeds, intermittent reinforcement and highly personalised recommendations forms what researchers call “attention engineering”. By offering just enough surprise and uncertainty, platforms maximise time on site and create fear of missing out.

This isn’t just a design critique; it has measurable psychological costs. A 2024 study exploring mindless versus mindful scrolling found that such design patterns encourage obsessive browsing and link to anxiety and fatigue. My personal experience and research also shows that personalised feeds and endless notifications are meant to capture and retain attention, often at the expense of critical thinking. The result is what users call doomscrolling: we keep pulling down the feed hoping for something meaningful, but the algorithm mostly serves whatever maximises engagement rather than what we actually want.

Body image, anxiety and the science behind “brain rot”

My frustration with Instagram wasn’t just about wasted time; it was how the app made me feel. The Wall Street Journal’s 2021 reporting on internal Facebook research revealed that 32 % of teen girls said Instagram made them feel worse when they felt bad about their bodies, and Facebook’s own slides noted that it “makes body image issues worse for one in three teen girls”. The company’s researchers also reported that teens blamed Instagram for increases in anxiety and depression, with some users even linking suicidal thoughts to their experience.

Independent studies corroborate these concerns. A 2025 quantitative study of Indian youth found that 93 % of participants used Instagram daily. Heavy users (more than three hours per day) scored significantly higher on depression, anxiety and stress scales. The study concluded that frequent Instagram use, especially following food and lifestyle accounts, was associated with elevated levels of depression, anxiety and stress. Another review notes that image‑centric platforms like Instagram are particularly harmful because constant exposure to idealised lifestyles fuels social comparison and fear of missing out. This is why my feed full of “perfect abs” and #blessed travel posts felt less like inspiration and more like a constant reminder of what I wasn’t doing.

The platform’s culture also normalises body shaming. A 2024 analysis of over 2,000 teen posts across various platforms found that Instagram was the social network most frequently mentioned for body shaming, while Facebook was most commonly linked to privacy violations. So when I say my brain felt like mush after an hour on Instagram, it wasn’t just personal. There’s evidence that the app systematically amplifies content that erodes self‑esteem and fosters negative emotions.

Feeding the echo chamber

Algorithms optimise for engagement, not truth or nuance. Over time, my feed turned into an echo chamber. The more I liked wildlife photography, the more the algorithm sprinkled in unrelated viral Reels, gossip and rage‑bait. This isn’t accidental. Research papers i mentioned earlier also mentioned that endless scrolling coupled with personalised recommendations creates confirmation bias. Users are exposed mostly to content that reinforces their existing beliefs, which can lead to polarisation and anxiety. Some times I think that negative experiences are platform‑specific: teens go to Snapchat for romantic connections and YouTube for self‑promotion, but they complain that Instagram fosters body shaming. The algorithm doesn’t understand context; it simply feeds you more of whatever triggers a reaction, whether that’s a serene landscape or a conspiracy meme.

Surveillance capitalism: your data is the product

Leaving Instagram wasn’t just about mental health, it was about privacy. The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) reports that dominant social networks like Meta (Facebook and Instagram) collect vast amounts of sensitive data about users’ activities, interests, personal characteristics and political views. These platforms use the data to keep users engaged, sell micro‑targeted advertising and train AI models, creating a feedback loop where user data fuels more personalised (and manipulative) content. Former FTC commissioner Rohit Chopra describes how behavioural advertising turns users into products. Platforms have an incentive to increase total time on site and curate environments that goad users into monetizable actions. To achieve this, they collect far more than you intentionally share, including viewing behaviour, reactions and activities across websites where Facebook’s tracking pixels are embedded.

Remember WhatsApp? When Facebook bought it in 2014, the founders promised never to sell personal data, but by 2016 the company began collecting WhatsApp users’ data. It was a pivotal moment that pushed me away from Meta’s ecosystem. The pattern is clear. Services that begin with promises of privacy eventually become funnels for data extraction.

Why Google might be next

Many friends ask why I haven’t deleted my Google account yet. The honest answer is momentum and convenience. Google Search, Gmail, Docs and Maps are woven into my daily life. But the same surveillance‑driven model underpins them. Privacy researchers note that Google’s browser, Chrome, collects 20 different categories of user data, ranging from personal identifiers and contact lists to payment details, precise location and complete browsing history. Signing into a Google account lets the company link these data points into a detailed personal profile. Chrome synchronisation uploads your browsing history, open tabs, bookmarks and even autofill data to Google’s servers for further profiling.

It doesn’t stop at the browser. A privacy explainer from security firm Avast said that Google collects data across all its services, including browsing behaviour, Gmail and YouTube activity, location history, Google searches and even online purchases. This data is used to build an advertising profile that includes your age, job industry and interests, enabling highly targeted ads. While Google argues that the data helps improve services, the volume of information collected means your email receipts, calendar invites and document drafts contribute to a dossier thicker than your passport.

Knowing this, I’ve begun migrating to alternatives like DuckDuckGo for search. 

So what now?

Quitting Instagram didn’t make me a technophobe. It made me conscious. I still use X (formerly Twitter) some times sparingly, mostly for news, but I’m wary of its own toxicity and influencer culture. Reddit has thoughtful communities when you curate your subreddits. YouTube is invaluable for physics lectures and tutorials, but I use it through privacy‑enhancing front ends. Discord is strictly for gaming and hobby communities. No to very little life‑tracking there. I mean I'm not sure yet but I believe if you put all the data from just few companies like Google, X, LinkedIn, Meta and Microsoft together, you'll end up making a complete profile of a human to most probably predict what they're thinking and maybe that's why you feel that these apps know what you're thinking and USA is USA. 

The point isn’t to abandon every platform (I mean security and terror elimination/prediction is important) but to choose tools that serve me instead of letting algorithms choose for me. After leaving Instagram, I started to reclaim my attention span. I’ve read more books, spent more time outdoors and felt less anxiety about other people’s curated lives. I write this not to preach, but to answer the friends who keep asking: Why don’t you use Insta? Because my time, my privacy and my mental health are worth more than a feed designed to keep me scrolling. 

If your feed has started to feel like brain rot, remember: you don’t owe the algorithm anything. Close the app. Go outside. Write a letter. Install privacy‑respecting alternatives. Breathe.