I printed my Instagram feed for a month
Didn't quit social media, just the infinite scroll
Before I get shit for writing yet another think piece about quitting social media, I cannot emphasize enough that I didn’t. Instead, I painstakingly printed out my social media feeds FOR AN ENTIRE MONTH so I could read them like a newspaper, as god intended.
If I can’t scroll, I figured, there must be an end to my mindless consumption, right?
This is the first installment of my series “Cyber Celibate,” where I give up a piece of tech each month in place of its more archaic counterpart — veganism for tech, sort of.
What I gave up: the infinite scroll
How did I cope: printing out my FYPs
Did it suck: not really
The infinite scroll needs no introduction. You rot, you swipe, you engage with the internet in real-time, endlessly. It’s how I regulate my nervous system. Doomscrolling through an endless chain of quips about the apocalypse punctuated by 3-second cooking videos just hits better than Zoloft.
During your bedtime TikTok binge, what makes you decide when it’s time to sleep?
The physical constraints of distributing information used to slow everything down. Once upon a time, we had carrier pigeons. Then, town criers made it big. Just a couple years ago, we relied on tabloids for gossip. Today, TikToks go viral in minutes and scandals take over media cycles within hours. Online, everything is instantaneous. Paper took time to print. Facts used to be checked. Your crier had to walk to your block.
How much we consumed used to also be limited. Rather than a 5-minute talking head video explaining in excruciating detail how much the neighbor’s second husband glowed down since the divorce, we were limited to whatever tiny scroll our pigeons could carry. “New hubby. Not cute. Crusty.” Something like that.
Getting caught up is important, but what if I did so at a more humane pace? What if I followed the cadence of my ancestors?
Some ground rules
I must delete all social media apps for the duration of my experiment
I must only read content in its printed form. No printer, no content.
I only get 20 pages of printed content each day
Not owning a printer made this much more difficult than expected.
Every day, I created a ‘newspaper’ of my social media by compiling screenshots of each feed. To capture more than just one post on screen, I zoomed out of all my windows, preventing me from reading any actual content before I printed my paper. I couldn’t recall the last time I had to print something. I certainly did not remember how expensive it was.
The process reminded me of my time editing my college newspaper, when we scrambled daily to get copy to the printers before 2AM. With respect to rule #2 (see above), working from home meant no social media for me, just as missing the 2AM cut off meant no campus news for the people of Yale.
I’d be lying if I said this quickly became a part of my morning routine. Five steps, including a commute to work, just to be a full day and a half late to reading some viral, throwaway joke.
Then there were the ads.
One of the worst things Instagram has done (besides make timelines algorithmic) is Suggested Posts.
Since I’ve allowed myself only 20 pages (screenshots) of content, each post had to count. But instead of catching up on updates from close friends, all I saw were sponsored posts from Alix Earle. I put in all this work just for the same five bikini pics?
***
Holding physical copies of my friend’s thirst traps on the train made me feel something.
Ink on paper made my FYPs feel so much more formal and fixed, a direct contrast to how our phones refresh edits and deleted content in real time. I was painfully aware though, of how out of date my information could be at any given time. Yes, Whoopi Goldberg was trending when I printed this. Was she still? I’ll never know.
Committing to the ritual of compiling and printing my FYP paper each morning was tough. Looking like a freak on the subway while I read my *morning news* did not help.
I was reading captions (and hashtags, my god) line by line, like a book. And while my aura wasn’t giving what a well-dressed Brooklynite with nano-bangs reading Proust would have given, I felt closer to a state of mindfulness than I otherwise would have scrolling on my phone.
I began marking the pictures I wanted to Like and Comment on when I’m back.
Prior to swearing my vow of digital chastity, I engaged with whatever content first came up. I would lose track of who’d posted what, where I could find those posts again, and whether I’d adequately hyped my friends up online.
Holding physical copies of my feed, though: Game changer. I’d annotate my feed and make a list of Comments and Likes I need to give retroactively. Comment: “slayyyy” (I am well aware that this term is no longer in-vogue, let me be) on Michelle’s photo dump? Check. Congratulate Alice on graduating law school? Check.
Labeling loose pages of my FYP as though I were grading middle-school papers brought me closer to the content I actually cared about. Even if it was just a Timmy meme.
Getting notified that your office crush just Liked an old photo of yours just doesn’t hit the same anymore.
Because Instagram now orders your feed based on what type of content it assumes you’d engage with the most, old photos from random accounts are periodically resurfaced. An isolated, 2AM Like can now either be the product of a midnight social-stalk or an innocent bedtime peruse.
Remember when group chats would simultaneously go off when EVERYONE saw that one gym selfie? The closest I’ve gotten to that feeling was that tiny earthquake that hit NYC a couple months back. Literally groundbreaking.
Now more than ever, apps are designed to put us on our own cadence of social media consumption. We see things at different times, react in a staggered way, but are all somehow always online.
And if the goal of fostering this kind of fragmented consumption is to elicit envy, competition, self-doubt — emotions that prompt us to disassociate— bring back the Following Activity feature on Instagram! The whole appeal of social media is how it makes hidden social cues explicit. Let’s not beat around the bush here.
How much do I really care?
As the weeks went on, I found that I didn’t want to drag my ass to the nearest FedEx and spend $1.50 per page (I KNOW) just to see pictures of martinis in the West Village or Alix Earle for the 50th time. The literal and figurative weight of my printed FYPs slowly eroded my interest in being online. It was just so much work for such little substance. I was too lazy to keep up with it all. But really, what was I keeping up with?
The infinite scroll gave me the satisfaction of scratching near an itch. While always almost there, it was never wholly satisfying (why we end up wanting more).
Pictured: my stack of FYPs peeking out of my bag at a work happy hour
It wasn’t always like this.
There used to be an end to the consumption.
If you were to scroll just a couple years prior, there’d be a limit to how long you could rot for. Because timelines back then only included posts from those you followed and were organized chronologically, the cornucopia of content had an end. There would come a point where your device literally told you there was no more. It was like social media had business hours. We’re forced to take a break.
***
The form of social media gives it an air of nonchalance — it’s just pixels on a screen, a product of a swipe, even as being online feels so consequential. We’re told that every Like, every Share, every Follow is political. I feel like I need to always be online, all for fear of not being hip to the latest Twitter truism.
Printing all my FYPs out, for the manual labor it required, made its form fit its function (sort of). It adjusted my priorities: if a post could lose all relevance within 24 hours, did it really matter? (Alix Earle, no. A girlfriend’s thirst trap, absolutely)
I can’t promise I won’t regress to my old ways. I do get a kick out of getting fire emoji comments on an obvious thirst trap. Khloe Kardashian did once say: “if we’re going to die anyway, might as well die with a good Snapchat going through.”
*in LinkedIn speak* What were my takeaways?
Regardless of who you are, Alix Earle will assault your feed.
My friend’s thirst traps deserve the respect of a Hardcover book (and so do yours).
Nothing you see online really matters that much.
Old social media rocked because at least it was honest.
Don’t worry, I’ll reuse my piles of loose papers for another project.
Love the experiment, thank you for carrying it out and reflecting on it! Random fact: did you know that in Victorian London, mail was delivered to homes 12 times a day?