Even as platforms like Instagram and X devolve faster and further into cesspools of hate speech and targeted harassment, I’ve come up with a range of excuses to keep on using them.
While some of these are vaguely valid (“as a culture writer, I need to be tapped into the online coversation”) and others are, well, not as credible (“I need to keep up with the Instagram stories of my ex’s ex who raises chickens on a rural co-op in Vermont”), seeing Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and X CEO Elon Musk appear as honored guests at President Donald Trump’s second inauguration has finally convinced me to change the way that I interact with the apps that have made these men rich.
Of course, I know well that many, if not all, of the modern conveniences I use on a regular basis were built by (and continue to benefit) people who mostly don’t share my dreams for a better and more progressive world. Similarly, while I do my best to cook and eat as ethically as I can, I could still do better when it comes to consuming meat and other factory-farmed, climate-change-hastening food goods; and while I try to shop small, vintage, and sustainably as often as I can, I also own an iPhone, among various other capitalist-hellscape-hewn products. (Never mind the fact that I can’t seem to avoid putting money into Jeff Bezos’s pocket every time my toothpaste runs out or my dog needs kibble.)
When it comes to social media, though, seeing the men who made the apps that helped me build my out, queer life flanking our country’s most powerful bigot at his inauguration was simply a bridge too far. If someone like Zuckerberg is going to commit to pathetically emulating alpha-bro behavior in order to ingratiate himself with the current administration, then I’m going to apply at least as much energy toward changing my often-toxic relationship with his tech.
I spent too much of my life trapped in the diet culture-enabled starve-gorge cycle of disordered eating to believe it’s a feasible for me to stop using Instagram or X cold turkey. The reason most diets fail is that it’s far easier to announced you’re “never going to eat carbs again” (or check your Instagram engagements, or fire off a tweet) than it is to slowly and surely modify your behavior until you feel more in control of your relationship to whatever substance you’re trying to swear off of. I have friends who’ve managed to fully kick their social-media habits, and I salute them, but I’m taking a different tack. As of now, I’m down to 30 minutes a day on Instagram and X, with the hope that I’ll be down to 20 minutes each next month, then 15 the month after that, until my shuffle over to Bluesky is complete. (Or maybe I’ll even…read a book?)
