I unfollowed over 200 Influencers/Celebrities on Instagram

Before I get started on why I decided to unfollow these celebrities and influencers I wanted to take a moment to link my story What I realized when I deleted Facebook. It was such an eye opening experience for me. Its been over 7 months since I got rid of facebook and I have still not looked back. I don't miss the toxicity of that platform, and anyone that knows me personally I keep in contact with via texts and phone calls. I'm not suggesting this is for everyone, but what I can say is if you're feeling drained or irritable try limiting your use and see what happens.

Now I am not a hater of social media, I think it has some great advantages. It has allowed people to make a living of some sort by being creative and doing what they love. Or given people a creative outlet to decompress after a long day at work. For people that aren't creating it's a place that they can escape to watching their favorite people. It's allowed a lot of us to meet life long friends from around the world, that we may have not of met without it. Shoot some people have even found the love of their lives because of social media platforms. With all that to say, with good comes bad, and this is what led me to unfollow even some of my favorite influencers and celebrities.

Every single one of us usually only shares highlight reels on our social media, and I love seeing what adventures people are up too. After a while though, especially in these times it grew harder for me to look at the highlight reels. I began comparing my life to theirs, thinking that I wasn't doing enough or I would never be happy unless I reached the level of success that they have. My mental health has been up and down, and only worse with everything going on in this world. So I began to evaluate who I followed and why I continued too.

When I began going through my list of followers, so many of the people I followed I couldn't even remember following. I believe this is because I had been on the platform for the better part of a decade so throughout different points I had followed them for one reason or another. This cleanup also included a lot of brands I followed as well. In the end this has nothing to do with the individual or brand itself. It's simply that I have either outgrown them, or what they are posting isn't influencing me in a positive way. It isn't their job to cater to everyone, it's their platform. My job for myself is to make my social media a place that is influential to me and not draining.

Another thing that I have to remember, and it's very hard, is that when social media began it was just a place to share your life, chat on messenger, and play FarmVille to harvest your pumpkins. Somewhere in between all of that is when it became a place to make money, and for many a job. That is when content changed, and for most of us it's when some of our favorite content changed to make money. I see comments all the time attacking people for not being as authentic or changing from who they once were, but most of us don't understand the behind the scenes aspect of social media. That aside people also grow and change, and sometimes we don't grow and change in the same way they do.

I decided to start unfollowing a lot of these people, brands, and everything in-between for my own well being. I wanted to see posts that influenced me, that fed my soul positively. I also wanted to allow space for my friends and family posts to actually be seen on my feed. There used to be a time when all you seen was people you were friends with or followed, and then the algorithm took over and everything changed.

One last thing that I will say, is we all need to start living in the present. Stop being on our phones so much, posting things for people that don't know us, and live in the moment. I am guilty of taking pictures and videos and immediately posting them to social media then look back at that moment and I hardly remember it. I often worry too much about numbers and how post are doing, and this is my hobby not a job. Sometimes I would give anything to go back to the days before all of this, were we went to a concert and watched the actual show. When we went out to lunch with a friend and instead of posting our location and a picture we just lived in the moment with them. We took pictures to remember the moment, but instead of them being instantly on our phone we had to develop them.

Call me old or whatever you want, but there is something magical about living the human experience for what it is and not feeling like you have to share it with the world.