The Instagram Effect: How It Changed My Habits & Behaviour

As a teen, I’m pretty much always on my phone. Whether it’s scrolling through reels or talking to my friends, I’m on some or the other form of social media throughout the day.

I got Instagram only once I turned 15 and I’m sort of glad I didn’t get it earlier. I’ve realized that it's super addictive and we don’t understand how much the constant usage affects us. Besides the strain it puts on our eyes and posture, it also has a huge psychological effect on us.

What is Instagram? It’s a social media platform where people share snippets of their lives, content and it’s a space to communicate with others.

While all those are obviously great things, it come with a plethora of negative aspects. Number 1 on the list of problems is the scrolling addiction. The internet is overflowing with content and our ‘For You’ page is an unending supplier of it. We mindlessly just keep flicking through stories & reels without realizing how it affects us. What I’ve come to learn through my own experience is that after some time we become so accustomed to scrolling that it becomes a reflex action for us to do so whenever we’re bored.

For us, it's become a way of keeping ourselves busy. Yes, that's what reels and posts are for, but only to a certain extent. After a point, we need to look beyond our phones and know that what we’re doing is really unhealthy.

I noticed this with myself; there was a point where all I’d do was be on my phone. I had become addicted to it. I was just going through reels all day and it made me snappy. I was very irritable and all I’d want to do was go back to my phone.

It took me some time to realize that I was in a rut, and I needed to get out of it. It didn’t just happen overnight though. It took me a few days (being the procrastinator that I am, I kept putting it off) and then I decided to get back to my writing.

Scrolling was just making me feel tired and lazy and my creativity was lost. I couldn’t even write this article for the longest time because I’d gotten a block and wasn’t feeling motivated enough to get myself out of the vicious cycle I’d fallen into. We know what it does to us, but we just choose to ignore it because we are living in a time where it’s a very regular thing.

I have realized that it’s up to me to make better choices, no one else can do it for me. It’s not a bad thing to be scrolling through our phones, we all do it and it’s alright. It comes with the day and age we live in. We’re not living in the 60s where there are no smartphones and Instagram. We’re kids of the 21st century and it’s a part of growing up in our generation but let’s not let it take over our lives.