What I gained by going off Instagram stories
Quitting low-stakes voyeurism on social media reduced my cognitive load and built stronger friendships
It’s been over three-and-a-half months since I stopped watching Instagram Stories. I was never a compulsive watcher; I only checked a handful of people’s stories. But consciously not checking them at all, especially when I see three green circles in a row—the unmistakable cue that someone’s sharing something with “close friends" only—has been quite something.
It started rather abruptly. In the first week of July, a small medical mishap landed me on a hospital bed for a few hours. A first-time experience that shook me more than I expected. I was discharged soon, but recovery stretched into a fortnight. Work deadlines loomed, and I was between houses, with most of my stuff packed in one, renovation chaos in another. Everything was becoming a bit too much.
One of the things I then decided to do to reduce my cognitive load was to stop checking Instagram Stories for some time. Because we all know it is a clear endless loop of distraction and low stakes voyeurism. Two weeks passed. As I began to feel better, I sensed that returning to Stories started to feel like stepping back into noise. So I decided to turn what began as a temporary digital detox into some thing more lasting.
I did wonder whether, as someone who writes about the internet, I might be missing out on story ideas by not watching Stories. After all, it is the first line of digital dispatch for so many people now. But then again, missing out is a given. You just decide what you can give a miss. Why let one of the buzziest features of the most habit-forming app of our times dictate how I spend my time? I’d completely understand if, after reading this, someone decides not to watch my stories either.
The best outcome of this experiment has been how some friendships have only deepened because of it. I mentioned to a few friends that I won’t be seeing Stories anymore, and now they send me updates—from new bedsheets to tragedies in common circles—because they know I won’t see them on Instagram. It’s heartwarming: the small act of someone thinking, “Oh, she won’t see this online, let me tell her directly." What began as a boundary has quietly become a bridge.
These friendships now feel more intentional. The connection feels stronger with people who actually care to reach out: the ones who choose to share one-to-one after doing one-to-many, or perhaps even before. It has made me think about how much of our communication had otherwise shifted to performative broadcasting, and how quietly most of us have come to accept that as the norm.
There’s something preciously analogue about someone choosing to tell you something insignificant privately in these uber-digital times, knowing you won’t be among the thousands who’ve already seen it flicker and disappear on a screen. It gives me hope that our connections can survive, even thrive, beyond the platforms that started off with the promise of bringing us closer, but ended up doing so much more, and not all of it good.
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