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This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at Bryn Mawr chapter.

Nowadays, social media is such a big part of our lives. When I first started Instagram in 2013, it was only a platform to share  pictures with my close friends and families. I liked the “follow” option since I could choose who to follow as well as who could follow me. The sense of security and having a close knit community with such a simple feature of just posting a picture was wonderful.

But then Instagram began to update with more features, and was bought by Facebook. Overwhelming ads and random posts for suggestions began to pop up on my feed, and my anxiety was rising more every day.

The most irritating aspect from the platform is its suggestions of social media stars who have tens of thousands of followers and tons of covert ads on their pages. Not only did they make my life seem deficient and boring, they were luring me to buy unnecessary products. I don’t want to blame everything on them, but one must be a superhero to be able to ignore Instagram’s every sneaky ads and its attempts to keep you distracted from communicating with your friends.

My second reason to take a break is my growing reliance on Instagram. I tried telling myself that I’m only on Instagram to keep in touch with my old friends and to keep up with what’s trending. But I realized being on Instagram and checking it every other minute has more to do with FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) than anything else. 

Nowadays, social media is such a big part of our lives. When I first started Instagram in 2013, it was only a platform to share  pictures with my close friends and families. I liked the “follow” option since I could choose who to follow as well as who could follow me. The sense of security and having a close knit community with such a simple feature of just posting a picture was wonderful.

But then Instagram began to update with more features, and was bought by Facebook. Overwhelming ads and random posts for suggestions began to pop up on my feed, and my anxiety was rising more every day.

The most irritating aspect from the platform is its suggestions of social media stars who have tens of thousands of followers and tons of covert ads on their pages. Not only did they make my life seem deficient and boring, they were luring me to buy unnecessary products. I don’t want to blame everything on them, but one must be a superhero to be able to ignore Instagram’s every sneaky ads and its attempts to keep you distracted from communicating with your friends.

My second reason to take a break is my growing reliance on Instagram. I tried telling myself that I’m only on Instagram to keep in touch with my old friends and to keep up with what’s trending. But I realized being on Instagram and checking it every other minute has more to do with FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) than anything else. 

Yeri Lee

Bryn Mawr '23

I'm an international student studying philosophy and sociology from Korea at Bryn Mawr College. I listen to K-hiphop the most (but also enjoy Frank Sinatra, Queen, etc). Talk to me all day about current events, philosophy, and history!