5 Good Enough Reasons to Delete Your Instagram

Mediocre reasons to delete a mediocre app.

I’ll be direct here: this is not an article about how you should delete your Instagram because you’ll gain back 25 hours in a day and your productivity will skyrocket and your ex will love you again and you won’t be so lonely anymore. Unfortunately, those problems require more than a click of a button to solve, despite the legions of folks out there insisting that deleting Instagram will change your entire life. It won’t.

Instead, this article is for those of you, like me, who have (or had) Instagram and don’t really know what to do with it. Maybe you just scroll and mindlessly like content, or maybe you’re addicted to a particular genre of influencers.

Whatever the case may be, you’re realizing that Instagram doesn’t really serve a purpose in your life. You’re not considering deleting it because you have any false fantasies about it altering your mental state to the point of Nirvana. It’s just that it doesn’t really do anything for you, so why keep it?

If that’s you, then I have some wonderfully decent but unexceptional reasons to give you the boost you need. Keep in mind not all of the reasons may apply to you. Maybe none of them will. In any case, without further ado, here they are:

You never wanted it in the first place

My Instagram account was created back in 2019, but I wasn’t the creator. Two of my friends made it for me and handed over the account details, insisting my social life (which, mind you, was already fine) would benefit from the app. Their hearts were in the right place, but even though I kept the app (with intermittent deleting and re-installing) for two years, I never really gleaned any benefit from it. It was always neutral or negative.

After a certain point, I realized that if I was just going to keep deactivating it temporarily every few months, that was probably a sign that I didn’t really need it. And so, it’s gone, and I can’t say I have noticed the absence.

So, if your Instagram account somehow came into being without your full enthusiasm, perhaps it’s time to hit that delete button.

You value sleep

Chances are, if you have Instagram, you’re scrolling at night before you nod off to sleep. You’re probably losing 30 minutes to an hour of sleep just via the browsing, but that’s okay. Maybe you’re looking at something important, like Bitcoin’s value or Elon Musk’s latest idiosyncratic announcement. As I said, I’m not here to lecture you about productivity.

I do, however, value peaceful and uninterrupted sleep, primarily because I rarely get it. I also have a habit of being on my phone before I go to sleep, and as such, the blue light emitted from the screen (yes, even in Night Mode) messes with my circadian rhythm right before bed. As a result, I wake up multiple times during the night and never feel quite as well-rested as I should.

However, this past summer, I put my phone away an hour before bed, and read a book before I slept instead. I cannot say this emphatically enough: the quality of my sleep improved drastically. I slept without intermittent periods of awakening, and when I did wake up, I felt much better than before.

Deleting Instagram gives you one less reason to scroll. Don’t do it for the productivity; just do it to feel physically good for once.

You’re running out of storage space on your phone

There are quite a few people perpetually complaining online that Instagram takes up far too much space on their phones. The reason for this is that over time, Instagram stores information about files in its cache, so it can load faster when you next open the app. As it stores more information, you lose more space on your phone.

This is absolutely, positively unacceptable. How are you going to screenshot that mildly humorous meme and send it to your 3 friends if you don’t have any space?

The solution: delete Instagram. I suppose in theory you could also just clear the cache, but that’s so complicated (disclaimer: it’s not really that complicated). Besides, where’s the fun in that?

You’re in a committed relationship

I don’t actually have any personal experience with this one, so in classic young adult fashion, I’m offering wisdom based on the perspectives of others who have conveyed this sentiment (an aside: observational learning is highly underrated).

In any case, if you have Instagram and you’re human, at one point or another you’ve probably browsed the photos of someone you find attractive. This might be a favorite actor, a professional sports player, or just some random old classmate you don’t really even know anymore.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with that, but let’s be honest here. They probably won’t say anything (because they do it too), but your partner or spouse probably doesn’t feel too great about your Instagram viewing.

Of course, expecting someone to just not be attracted to others after entering a relationship is unrealistic and unhealthy. But on the other hand, it can also be unhealthy to become obsessed with people’s picture-perfect (and also fake) personas and relationships on Instagram.

A delicate balance indeed. This isn’t a particularly convincing reason to delete Instagram; that is admittedly a bit drastic. Then again, I never claimed good reasons. Just good-enough ones.

You just don’t need it anymore

Ask yourself this: what do you actually use Instagram for?

Is it to see what’s going on in the world? There are more reliable news sources out there.

Is it to keep in touch with people? As sad as it may be, most meaningful friendships cannot be cultivated via following and being followed by someone.

Is it to support your friends by liking and commenting on their posts? This is mildly depressing. Support your friends by calling them and telling them how great they are, not ego-boosting them in an already overcrowded comment section.

My point is, it’s incredibly likely that you’ve just gotten used to having Instagram around, but it serves no real purpose in your life. And to those who will complain that I promised not to talk about productivity, I assure you this isn’t about that — at least not for me.

You don’t need to eliminate things from your life for the sole goal of becoming a more efficient human. However, it doesn’t make sense to keep things around if they serve absolutely no purpose. That purpose could be as simple as bringing you joy. If Instagram brings you joy, that’s great. Keep it. But if not, and if you can’t come up with another good-enough reason to have it, then maybe you’ve just found a good-enough reason to delete it.

Final Thoughts

Instagram is an okay app, and if you like it, good for you. This article isn’t for you.

But if you’ve just kept it around for no apparent reason (as I did for quite a while), then maybe one of the nudges above is all you need to finally get rid of it. You can always get it again.

In the meantime, maybe you’ll finally be able to get some sleep.