Extra LSR: Why Instagram Sucks.

Nine reasons why Instagram isn’t worth your time.

I’m just going to come right out and say it: Instagram is trash, you guys.

That felt good. Now the backstory…

Some of you might’ve noticed I’ve been on Instagram less over the past year or so. In 2019, I found myself really dreading the app and all the work it took just to get the slightest bit of growth, but I kept sucking it up because it was part of the gig. If you wanted to maintain a viable business, Instagram had to be part of your portfolio. That’s the way it was.

Then 2020 happened. COVID. Social justice movements highlighting long-standing, serious racial inequities in our country. Disinformation campaigns. Political insanity. An actual insurrection.

I stopped posting on my feed but took to stories to share the information I found valuable and to speak out on issues I couldn’t ignore. I even spun up a little series (AshRockTalk!) where I pulled back the curtain a bit on the influencer industry and how it’s not all sunshine and Old Navy-haul roses. (That was super fun!) But when not participating in those things, the app made me feel… well, gross. The more I reflected on why I felt that way, the more I realized that Instagram was truly the worst.

Buckle up, buttercups, this is a long one. (Note: while many of the reasons below are influencer-specific, a few are certainly applicable to the normal user.)

1. Instagram is oversaturated.

The platform is clogged with influencers new and old, all clamoring for your likes and comments. You used to be able to find new people easily using hashtags or the explore page; now hashtagging is nerfed and the explore page only features the biggest accounts.

Instagram hides people randomly from your feed (and obviously chronological feeds aren’t a thing anymore), forcing you to hunt them down and super-engage on their last few posts in attempt to get them to resurface.

This not only makes the app frustrating to use, but it also makes it really hard to grow. Because if other people are getting buried, you’re probably getting buried, too. You’re just one account in a sea of social media.

“Create original, authentic content and you’ll grow!” Or so they say. But it’s just not like that anymore; there are too many people and the app doesn’t support small(er) creators the way it used to. (The #styleblogger tag has 44 million posts!) And while it’s totally okay for big accounts to be big and small accounts to be small (a niche audience is sometimes better than a massive audience), Instagram isn’t doing us any favors by making smaller accounts more findable. The app literally works against you.

2. You don’t own Instagram.

You sign a terms of service agreement with Instagram upon account creation and they give you a username and space on their platform to create content.

But that doesn’t mean you own your page. Not really.

Instagram is not a right, it’s a private company.

At any moment, Instagram can shut you down. This is especially true if you violate any of their community guidelines, which are sometimes very vague and not equitably applied– see all the curvy and marginalized bodies wearing bikinis that have their content taken down by Instagram while straight-sized bodies doing dances ripped off from TikTok are allowed to stay up.

Instagram controls your page, how it looks and can manipulate your feed. They routinely add and take away features that impact your profile. They can limit how much of your audience sees your content. (Sometimes only 5-10% of your audience will see your posts!) Unless, of course, you pay to boost your content.

There’s also the ever-changing engagement dance you’re supposed to do right after posting that “shows Instagram” your post is worth opening up to a wider part of your audience. Drop your post. Figure out whatever convoluted hashtag strategy to use. Engage on accounts in your feed. Encourage people to save + share. Comment on accounts who’ve commented on your last post. Post to stories. Answer questions + engage with comments on the new post for a while after posting.

This was just the song and dance back when I was regularly posting to my feed. I’m sure the rules have since changed.

But be careful! They shadowban you for overusing a hashtag or commenting too fast– or not, maybe shadowbanning doesn’t exist? Maybe it does? Who knows?! Because Instagram is shady as hell about how they operate!

Compare this to your blog, where you are the algorithm. You choose what content is prioritized or featured, in what order, and for how long. You choose the features (widgets, blog design) that get added and removed from your site. You actually own your domain name (whereas Insta owns your handle).

It seems wild to me that people are building businesses on a platform they don’t own (as in right now, from scratch– not the people who started years ago and/or already have a dedicated audience of real followers) and expect to quit their full-time jobs within a year. Like, what? And for those bigger accounts whose main following is all-Insta (not a blog or another channel), they’re putting all their faith in Instagram to keep them appropriately surfaced and relevant.

Which brings me to my next point…

3. Instagram changes the rules– all the time.

I’ve touched on this a little bit, but basically: Instagram is constantly changing the rules of engagement. Literally.

The methodologies that made for successful Insta content a few years ago are not what makes successful content today. (I’d argue that even if you follow today’s rules, you can’t guarantee your content will be successful.)

Now, of course, strategies change over time. That’s fine. But Insta frequently rolls out changes behind the scenes that completely alter the way content is displayed and aggregated across the platform– and they don’t share these changes. We get snippets of rumors from people who “have friends at Facebook or Instagram” or when some social media agency publishes a blog post on the “Top 3 New Instagram Strategies for Right Now!” We don’t get a roadmap; we don’t get the rules.

This is largely due to the fact that Instagram doesn’t really care about its users. Sure, it needs users to keep the platform alive– but users aren’t paying for access to the app. And if you aren’t the person paying, you’re the product being sold. Instagram truly cares about its advertisers– these are the people/entities actually pumping money into the platform. As a business, Instagram needs to make money. That’s their main objective. So they’re altering strategies and changing algorithms that make their advertisers happy and thus make them more money.

4. Instagram has a limited shelf life.

Someday, Instagram will go the way of MySpace. Or (more likely) Facebook.

It’ll no longer be where people go to build small businesses or create real, inspiring content. It won’t be the app du jour. Something will replace it.

TikTok is already eating into its margins and the next big social media platform is always looming just over the horizon. It’ll happen– not today or maybe even next year, but it’ll happen.

Now think about this: what if you’ve built an entire online brand and business (as an influencer or otherwise) exclusively on a platform whose days are numbered?

Scary, right? And not real smart.

5. Instagram is fake as hell.

Not only is it a highlight reel (for everyone!) but it’s filled with disingenuous people looking to claw their way to the “top.” Especially in the influencer space.

There, I said it.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve connected with someone who “loves my content!” only to totally ghost once I follow back. I’ll work hard to support the accounts I connect with and find that many of them are just in it for my like or follow.

Perhaps I was naive or the Instagram landscape changed (or both), but I started to feel like, “Shit, none of this is real. None of these people care. It’s just transactional.”

Oh, and don’t forget the influencers buying followers and other types of engagement to make themselves seem more successful. Super. Fake. Or paying money to companies to join loop giveaway after loop giveaway to inflate their following. (No, it’s not always “me and my closets blogger pals.” It’s companies who run giveaways as a business, pay sponsors to anchor/promote the loop, and make bank doing it.)

And while we’re talking fake… how about the over-editing and strategic hiding of anything that doesn’t paint you to be a rich-but-thrifty, beautiful-but-effortless *girl boss* who can and does have it all? The rat race of always projecting some unattainable standard of perfect! Thin! Beautiful! Successful!

I understood that an industry like this is often very superficial. But it wasn’t just bigger accounts or people who lived in far-off cities. I was noticing quite a few of the local influencers I’d meet were less than genuine. This was happening right here in my home town! Somehow that stung more than girls I would feasibly never meet in real life.

Let me tell you a little story: years ago a new-ish influencer here in KC reached out and wanted to get together for lunch. She seemed really sweet and was looking for some guidance on how I approached Instagram as a business. At the time, she had about 2500 followers and was looking for tips on growing her following, engagement, and other strategies to keep her account fresh. We met up and hit it off; I thought she was a genuine person and offered to help her however I could.

Two weeks later, I hopped over to her account to engage with her content–and she had 24,000 followers. Her most recent pictures had 500ish likes and then 400 comments (most of them nonsensical and spammy).

She had left our lunch, decided to forgo any real effort, and bought her following and engagement. Why waste a few hours of my time if you were just going to purchase followers from some random bot farm?

I’d see her at events (pre-COVID), and she’d be fanning around, acting like she’d been an ~*~influencer~*~ for years. Name-dropping her recent partnerships (which she’d landed by duping brands with her fake following) and talking about how “building your Instagram takes a lot of work and authenticity.” She would jockey to speak on “master class” panels about how to “build your brand.”

GIRL. YOU BOUGHT YOUR “BRAND.”

It was hilarious and pathetic on her part, but it was also insulting. Like, can you just not?

I don’t consider myself a particularly nice person (average nice is okay), but even I don’t understand being nice to people just because you want some sort of social media currency from them.

You guys, I was just so tired of it.

6. Instagram is addictive.

How many times have you “just popped on Instagram for a minute” only to look up and an hour has gone by? You’ve been scrolling and scrolling, hopping down one rabbit hole to the next, discovering new accounts, and catching up with old friends.

Some of this is perfectly normal and even healthy– connection is good and if you can set it up so Instagram contributes to feeling more connected, rad. That is great!

The problem is many of us get addicted to the connected feeling; we feel like if we don’t catch up on our feeds, we’ll miss something important. If we don’t like and comment on all the accounts we’re trying to keep up with, we’ll be forgotten. And as we scroll and witness via Insta all the things everyone else is doing (or appears to be doing), it makes us feel like we’re missing out. Vicious cycle; snake eats its own tail.

Influencers also get addicted to + reliant on the feeling validated when a post performs well. Before you know it, you expect every post to crush it. When it doesn’t, you feel like a failure. Sure, it’s easy to say, “Don’t be silly– you should love the content you create no matter how well the post performs!” Yes. True. But also, that’s not how human nature consistently works.

There’s listening to your audience (which you should always be doing!) but when you take into account Instagram isn’t playing fair (see above item on changing rules) and it’s easy to get addicted to feeling validated on social media… you can see how the app becomes a pretty toxic place.

7. Instagram is a timesuck.

In order to “grow” (or so they say), you have to be on Instagram for hours a day. HOURS. Engaging on content similar to yours, the content of your followers, and the content of brands you’d like to work with. Hours commenting back, answering messages, replying to stories, using Instagram’s newest features– all in attempt to stay relevant on the app. All in attempt to try and get Instagram to show your content to more people and make you more findable.

It’s exhausting! And for what?! Insta to show your content to another few percentage points of your audience?

Now, I’m not talking about having real conversations with people in your comments/stories. That is one of the most rewarding parts of the app and probably the only reason I haven’t fully deactivated it. I love getting questions + having discussions in DMs and watching the stories of people I care about– many of whom are frequent fellow bloggers who visit me here on LSR. I like seeing what my fellow content creators (the real ones, anyway) are doing and supporting them along the way.

What I’m talking about is the ravenous hunt for new followers to keep growing and the constant push-push-push of monetized content to keep brands and affiliates happy. The way you’re expected to post several times a day. (The actual effort it takes to truly produce inspired, original content at a cadence that allows you to post several times a day? Come. On.) The hours you’re expected of engagement you’re expected to log.

And even if you do all this? Success is not guaranteed. You can work and work, churn and churn and your account’s following or engagement won’t budge. This can happen for months or even years on end.

All of that time wasted just to tread social media water. Time. Suck.

What I’ve done with the extra time not spent on Instagram? Putting more work into my blog. Getting more bold + inventive with my outfits. Trying out different content verticals. Exploring new-to-me publishing mediums. All of these things drive my creativity (and my brand, even if it’s no longer measured in Instagram Success) forward, whereas I felt stuck inside a hamster wheel before.

8. Instagram is all the same.

Do you ever scroll the app and see basically the same thing 10 times? Like the same shot (flowers in a farmhouse sink) or the same dress (NSale is almost here!) or the same pose? The same filter? Caption style? There are reasons for this, and it’s not just because influencers aren’t original.

It’s because everyone is chasing a handful of influencers and trying to replicate their success. If it works for her, it’ll work for me. Or so they think.

The sameness is also fed by affiliates like RewardStyle who constantly send emails telling their influencers about “what’s selling right now!” Everyone feels compelled to share these popular things to “increase their visibility” and to make money via affiliate commissions. So if a blush pink water bottle is the “top-selling thing on the app right now!” you’re going to see a shit ton of collages featuring it and influencers holding it while sprawled over the front console of their black SUV wearing a leopard fleece. (Caption: This is probably wine.🍷)

And then you’ve got the “I’m an Influencer, Too!” movement. Every pretty girl with an Amazon Prime account thinks she’s an influencer. (Can I tell you how much I’ve come to hate this word? It’s cringe, man.)

Don’t get me wrong, I love Amazon and I love seeing Amazon favorites lists from the influencers/bloggers I enjoy– but there are a lot of girls who start Insta accounts (and don’t! Even! Have! Blogs!) just because they dress cute and think it’s easy.

They see this massive influencer movement (a billion dollar industry!) and want to give it a try. (Sometimes “try” is generous.) But they have no idea what their content strategy is, how to refine their voice, who their core audience is, or how to write effectively. They just start using the long lens on their iPhone and boom! Influencer status. 

I’m in no way saying you shouldn’t share what you like (regardless of its popularity) and you shouldn’t try to make money from the content you create. And if you want to start an account where you feature all those things that you love, cool. Do all that. But where is your uniqueness? Where’s the content that is specifically you? Where’s your voice? What do you have to say? How are you different from the thousands (millions!) of influencers just like you?

If you’re just selling the same things to me over and over with endless swipe-ups, with no story or context from your life, and you look/sound like everybody else…? Why am I here? What are we doing? Bored. I’m bored.

9. Instagram can be really damaging to your mental health and self-image.

What happens when your entire Instagram feed is nothing but a very specific type of perfection? What if you never see bodies or skin tones that look like yours, people you can really relate to, or real stories of vulnerability? What happens when you scroll and scroll and all you see is how amazing everyone else is doing… while your life, well, not always amazing.

It’s going to affect you. It’s going to make you feel like you’re not good enough, skinny enough, or rich enough. It’s going to trigger anxiety and shadow when your real life doesn’t compare to someone’s Instagram life. Early research shows self-esteem decreases as hours spent on social media increases (especially in teens!) which absolutely makes sense when you consider the above.

The kicker: those perfect feeds are not run by perfect people! Everyone is keeping up appearances.

Our brains can’t really process this, however– even though we subconsciously know no one’s feed is totally real. The feelings of inadequacy are inevitable when the only visual evidence your brain has is everyone else is doing so much better than you.

It’s not intentional. Of course most people are only going to show the good stuff, the pretty stuff. Why would someone– especially someone who is building a professional brand– want to show how messy life can get? It’s totally human nature to want to project, “I’m doing good! Things are great!” but it’s not reality and Instagram really exacerbates this.

Note: social media in general is a great way to keep in touch with people (especially during a pandemic!) and it certainly has done so much to enrich our lives. And you can certainly curate your feed to be whatever you want; you can mute or unfollow people who don’t make you feel good (you should absolutely do this!) and you can create a space that’s safer for your mental health. My main issue is that so many of the influencer accounts contribute negatively, whether they know it or not.

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That’s where I’m at, pals. All these feelings added up and made me realize: I don’t need to spend a lot of time in a space that doesn’t make me feel good.

That doesn’t mean I’m not a blogger anymore (Instagram ≠ blogging). Creating and sharing content here is still an important part of my life. I dig all the relationships I’ve made here (authentic ones! Not based on engagement or clout!) and cherish hopping around and visiting everyone’s blogs each week.

I’ve just taken a step back from Instagram– certainly in the influencer sense but also in the personal sense. I’ll hop on occasionally (usually to share a blog post via stories), and I take that time to unfollow/mute people showing up in my feed that aren’t people I truly want to connect with. I do genuinely love the more authentic relationships (influencers have ruined that word, but you know what I mean) I’ve made on Insta, and those are the accounts I focus on. I’m also all about a DM convo if anyone has a question or wants to chat. REAL connection vs. contrived, transactional connection is just where I’ve drawn the line.

I want to thank Carrie from Curly Crafty Mom for encouraging me to write this! She and I had a lengthy DM a few weeks ago about many of these things and she was the one who came up with the idea of me turning those thoughts into a post. Thank you, Carrie!

I’m so curious to hear what you guys think about this. How do you feel about Instagram these days?

Linking up with Elegantly Dressed and Stylish, The Fashion Canvas, I Do DeClaire, Style Splash, Straight A Style, Jersey Girl Texan Heart, Living on Cloud Nine, Effortlessly Sophisticated, Curly Crafty Mom + Doused in Pink, Mummabstylish, Elegance & Mommyhood, Nancy’s Fashion Style, Confessions of a Montreal Styling Diva, Lizzie in Lace, Shelbee on the Edge, The Grey Brunette, My Random Musings, Glass of Glam, and Away from the Blue.