The one change that worked: I deleted Instagram – and embraced the joys of a truly private life

I’d become obsessed with appealing to my invisible audience. But since I ditched the app a year ago, my quieter moments have taken on brilliant new meaning I first downloaded Instagram when I was 17 and became hooked on it the way most people fall in love: slowly, and then all at once. For a long time, I never considered myself a social media addict.

I self-righteously refused to download TikTok, declared Snapchat to be for “children”, and posted less regularly on Instagram than half of the people I followed. As I went through my university years, however, certain changes crept up on me. I began to swap reading – or essay-writing – for hours spent curating new posts. On my way home from lectures (or later, from my work as a journalist), I would spend ages trying to take…