As mentioned in a previous post, I was planning to deactivate my public Instagram account. Well it's done. Yay!
I was able to download all my data from Instagram before deactivating it. It was easier than I thought it would be. You can put in a request to download all your data from the Settings –> Privacy section. It might take awhile for Instagram to come back with a link to download your data. Mine didn't take that long as I didn't have that many posts. Total size for my data was around 220 MB.
As of this month, I would say it has been about a year since I've deactivated my Facebook account. I don't have any intentions of going back, so I would consider my attempt to get off Facebook, a success. Now I'm turning my attention to Instagram.
Update: I ended up creating a new Facebook account, here's why. My public Instagram account is still deactivated.
I have two Instagram accounts; a public one and a private one. I'm looking at deactivating my public Instagram account.
The plan is to replace that public Instagram account with this online journal. Instead of posting photos on that account, I will post the photos on here. I'm thinking of starting a new series called “Photo Log” which will basically feature photos, just like posting photos on Instagram. My first attempt at trying out that idea was this post.
I felt like I was showing off. Showing off what i had, showing off my life. And since my Facebook account was private, the only people who were seeing my posts were my friends. So I was basically showing off to my friends.
Update: I ended up creating a new Facebook account, here's why.
It didn’t feel that way in the beginning though. I thought sharing photos about my car, my gadgets, my road trips/vacations, my son, was one of the best ways to utilize Facebook. Somehow I forgot that the point was to connect with other people. But what else is there to do after you’ve added them as a friend, have browsed through their profile and liked/commented on their posts? Anyways, of course I was rewarded with some likes here and there, which simply made me want to do it more. It was not until I noticed other people doing the same thing that I started to question what I was doing.
It made me a judgemental jerk. Why? I don't know. Maybe I didn't agree with their post? Maybe I felt belittled by their post? Maybe I felt jealous because of their post? There could be a bunch of different reasons why, but either way I think it goes back to the content I saw on my news feed. In my previous post I talked about how I was trying to rein in the content that showed up on my news feed. Well another reason for wanting to do that, was because the content that was shared on my news feed unconsciously made me judge the people that shared them. And I didn't want to be like that.
Update: I ended up creating a new Facebook account, here's why.
I couldn't control the news feed. It wasn't for lack of trying too. During the months leading up to the day when I deactivated my account, I put in a lot of effort to try to control my news feed. Here are some of the things I tried:
