Am I A Bad Friend Without Instagram?

So when I was deciding what aspect of the Internet or social media I was going to give up for my mini digital detox, I gave myself two criteria:

1. What isn’t an absolute necessity in order to maintain my relationships (ex: Discord, Texting, Google Meets)

2. What do I use regularly enough where I would notice and be affected by its absence?

I eventually felt like Instagram fulfilled both these criteria, or so I thought. I found on average looking at my screen time that I spent about an hour a day on Instagram on average, and sometimes even upwards of two hours. It was consistently on my top ten most used apps, and I knew internally that I used it a lot.

As I may have mentioned in the past, I am 23 years old. In short, this makes me what some would call a, “digital native”, which means that I have had access to the Internet for as long as I can remember. I admittedly take it a step further and about 90% of people I would consider friends exist in my life exclusively through online means. I believe one can have as trusting, strong, and supportive of a relationship when they exist solely within a digital space as well as within a solely in-person space or a mix of the two. You do miss out on things though. Hugs, going to events together, going over to each other’s houses, the list goes on. And while I admit the lack of Instagram exacerbated the feelings of loss and emptiness within my relationships more, the biggest change that I noticed with its absence when it came to my friendships and my romantic relationship is that I felt like I was acknowledging and conversing with them less.

It has become a habit of mine when I scroll through Instagram Reels or go through my feed to send things that remind me of my friends and partner to them, via DMs on Instagram or through links on other sites. I always found it was a great way to show that I was thinking of them, and could even be a great conversation starter with them. Without it (as well as the combination of having gone most of those days without antidepressants), I was having very frequent thoughts that I was neglecting my friends and partner, and that I wasn’t putting in enough of an effort to talk with them. I had also made a new friend shortly before who had the prospects of me being able to see him at least in some capacity on a regular basis, and I became worried that I was giving him too much attention and neglecting my older friends. I feel like it was a failure on my part that one of my medicines for my psychological well being was not at my disposal during most of this experiment, because I feel like it drastically impacted my feelings during that time. I will say though that it was something I got used to, and I admittedly forgot I could use it again until I was on a bathroom break at work. I could watch short videos through YouTube Shorts (though not ones that were nearly as catered and interesting, lots of clips from Two Broke Girls for some reason), my news and interest posts through Reddit, and for finding things I wanted to purchase or a project I wanted to support, I would just go straight to the store websites or directly to the Kickstarter app. I feel like if I was either on my medication or took away more of my apps the results may have been more insightful, but I still feel like I got something out of it.