I Took A Break From Instagram, And I Haven’t Missed It

Imagine how much free time you’d have if you took a break from your favorite social media network that you don’t need for work.

For me, that medium was Instagram.

We can’t really do without social media nowadays, any more than businesses a century ago could do without a telephone. But compulsive social media use can erase the competitive edge social networks give us by causing us to waste time on useless scrolling and vanity posting.

Harvard researchers found that sharing information about oneself activates the same part of the brain getting money, eating, and having sex.

Like these things, social media use itself isn’t bad, but unlike these things, its use isn’t necessary for survival of the human race. Half of social media users even admit social networks make their lives worse, according to Digital Information World.

Although behavioral addictions don’t make you dependent on a substance, the feeling you get from an action — or even the action itself — can have the same effect. The lack of physical symptoms can make this type of addiction worse than substance abuse, because it makes it easier to deny its existence.

I deleted my Facebook app two years ago, when its algorithm started showing me the same five percent of my…