“Hello. It is Thursday, June 4, 2026, and I have watched my last-ever Instagram reel.”
Thus began the soliloquy that unspooled as I deftly accelerated into a hard left off Dewey Boulevard, sending my family’s 2017 Toyota Corolla shaking on its axles. Unfazed, I continued to rattle off the parameters for my self-imposed exercise in discipline into the receiver of the phone in my disquieted friend’s hand, Voice Memo rolling. With clear eyes and a full heart, I breached the early afternoon San Francisco fog as my car ascended toward my sunlit cul-de-sac, the fair weather further lifting my spirits.
I had cracked the code! I was one admirable display of devout self-control away from pure, wind-in-my-hair freedom. No longer would I be chained by my neural pathways to a life of boredom and high screen time. I was done mucking about at the slop bucket, ready to sniff out excitement like a truffle-seeking pig in the pursuit of more nutritious scraps.
My rules were simple and strict — no more short-form content, ever. If I happened to lapse, what would follow would not only be a bout of debilitating shame but also self-esteem-threatening ridicule by my best friend, who was more than happy to expend some harsh words in the interest of my lifelong happiness.
“If you hate it so much, why not just delete Instagram?” the obtuse observer might posit. To that, I would merely shake my head sadly at their woeful naivete, for I would never abandon the internet stranger who, upon seeing my thought-provoking carousel of happy images thoughtfully juxtaposed against a sad song, would surely exclaim “Dude, check it out — not only is this girl at least a six, but she seems plagued by complex sadness.” No, I couldn’t bear to part with the online persona that (I was convinced) portrayed me as the tragic subject of fragile happiness and wistful melancholy which, much like the fate of Schrödinger’s cat, was fixed only under the watchful eye of a compelled observer.
But my short-form content obsession had turned into a crutch that kept me hobbling through every listless Sunday afternoon, through time that I wanted to spend on personal betterment but instead spent numbing my troubles in a delirious haze as I laid contorted on my cluttered bedroom floor.
Here’s more or less how it goes: My phone holds my vigilant attention as it shows me a pitbull grabbing a chihuahua gently in its teeth and flipping it like a plastic bottle (AI-generated, as the comments astutely identify). Scroll. I stare on with furrowed brows and glazed eyes as a computerized voice drones on about some baby shower horror story while black-gloved hands expertly manipulate kinetic sand with glass apparatuses. Scroll. The next video compels me down a small rabbit hole until I am equipped to write a successful research paper on a startlingly blue-eyed Midwestern family with 14 dirty children.
“More,” whispers the hedonistic gremlin pulling strings under my suspiciously tall hat. My thumb twitches to the next snippet of inane garbage. Scroll.
When did I stop using time and start killing it? When did we all?
Before I lost myself in the digital swamp, I had the unhinged creative ferocity of Leonardo da Vinci, although the results I produced recalled a success more similar to his flying machine days than his Mona Lisa ones. In other words, I wasn’t much of an artistic prodigy. But somewhere deep in my ancestral genetics was inscribed the same desperate biological need to leave a mark on the world that plagued the inhabitants of that prehistorically decorated cave in Lascaux.
My free time was a montage of self-guided keyboard practice, unstrategic painting and hot glue gun tricks they definitely didn’t teach you in school. And while the fruits of my labor may not have been anything that could have fetched a pretty penny on Etsy, at least I had something to show for my time.
The death of my creativity came not only with the acquisition of my first cell phone, but with the inevitable onset of the tedium of life. Crawling home from school, sports and extracurricular activities, I didn’t much feel like banging away tactlessly on the keyboard. I set out to award myself only a few moments of daily distraction, which would need to be delivered quickly, forcefully and emphatically. Hence, my drug of choice: the ever-riveting ‘gram.
Even in my truly free time, creation ceased to be enjoyable. My art projects were too unsightly to be carried out at my old age — it’s no longer endearing, as an 18-year-old, to gift my relatives shoddy Christmas ornaments carved out of cork or handmade soaps whose colorful patterns quickly muddled into a blurry mess. Nor is it respectable to spend one’s time on endeavors so amateurish. It’s 2026 — who keeps a hobby they aren’t already good at?
How sad. Teenagers today are too scared to start any activity they haven’t already mastered; if their first attempts yield no marketable product, the task is abandoned for easier forms of passing the time. In our quest for self-idealization, we’ve missed the point of self-betterment. True progress comes in the muddling-through, the trying and failing and learning, not in the final, polished project. Instead, we passively accept crumbs of other people’s lives — their humor, talent, intellect, stupidity — just to feel like we’ve lived, too.
So it was thrilling to decide, once and for all, to do the hard thing. To get my life back, in all of its slowness and frustration and occasional mediocrity. And though I haven’t always been able to ignore the siren’s call from the digital sea — it was not, in fact, my last Instagram reel — I live every day with endless optimistic confidence in my success. I can’t help but feel the same sense of foolish determination I used to when I set out bravely with that hot glue gun, crochet hook, paintbrush or pocket knife. I welcome the challenge like an old friend.