Living an Instagram-able Life

I have seen quite a number of friends, bloggers and Tweets from Twitter complaining or more accurately moaning about Instagram. I have friends who have stopped using Insta and know bloggers who are constantly taking Insta breaks because this social media platform is too much hey. People concern themselves too much about living an ‘Instagram-worthy’ life – the perfect life, the good life, the look-at-me-I’m-amazing life.

Instagram is the boujee platform and its rich people who have made it seem that way, now people like us who aren’t part of the elite feel no sense of belonging when it comes to Instagram because it’s like the private school of social media platforms. But listen, I have said this once too many times, we compare our lives with people’s online content and by the looks of things, no one on social media has a horrible life simply because people post what they want us to see and not their whole life.

You start feeling intimidated by people who are your age or even younger than you but are ‘living the life’. You know what the problem is? You are probably following the wrong people. Let me tell you about the people I follow – 1. Friends and family, 2. Small bloggers like me, 3. Aesthetics pages and 4. Magazines. These are people and things that matter to me, I only follow 5 celebrities (Beyoncé, Zendaya, Lauryn Hill, Bonang and Simphiwe Dana) and I don’t care about those people who call themselves ‘influencers’ with 20k+ followers, I have no reason to follow them, they don’t inspire me in any way. Approximately 80% of the people I follow have 1k or less followers. I follow people who are living their lives without trying to impress us, people who make me laugh, who respond to comments and people who also don’t think Instagram is just for the rich.

Social media platforms are there for us to express ourselves, to share moments which made us happy, to post about what we love and what we are doing. Here is the problem with social media, it has the power to completely suck you in and when you are immersed in it, it will be hard for you to get out. Don’t allow yourself to get too attached to social media, especially Instagram. I am one of those people who are usually on Instagram and I post stories and upload pictures regularly too but I have never felt like it has taken over my life. Let me tell you what I do, which will probably work for you too… I normally set a schedule – I schedule when I should post stories and when to post on my page. This gives people the illusion that I am always on Instagram when I’m actually not and this will work perfectly for people with blogs because as a blogger you have to stay active on social media to promote your blogs.

I am active on all my social media accounts (besides Facebook because I am low-key over it and finding it a liiiiittle lame) and I stay active because I schedule my social media time and I suggest you try that out to avoid being attached. Remember, it’s your life man, post what you want to post, sometimes life is great and sometimes it’s not so great – if you went to the Bahamas by chance and you enjoyed it then post it, if you are having a regular day at home watching cartoons post it, why do you care so much about what people think? Do you boo, just do you.

Let’s make use of the social media platforms that are created for us. The point is to have fun guys, not to catch feelings and get depressed from what we see. Your life is Instagram-able the way it is, show us and don’t be ashamed. You worry too much, you worry about if you will get likes, followers or comments, well I’m here to tell you this… Nobody cares about what you do and it’s up to you to think about that negatively or positively. If you choose the positive route, then do whatever you want to do, however you want to do it and whenever you want to do it.

Also, I am super excited for this new Instagram video app called IGTV. It is almost like a YouTube channel but your videos are limited to 1 hour (which is actually long enough right). It is already available on Play Store and I find this so funny because lately I have been having thinking of posting videos here on my blog and then I found out about this. YASS! I will be posting videos from now (but not yet) so keep your eye on my IGTV channel, but also, I am looking forward to seeing you post too.

That’s it for now.