I don’t have an Instagram and that doesn’t make me irrelevant

“You don’t have an Instagram?”

Shocking, I know. I’m probably one of 10 white Jewish girls from the East Coast without one.

Let me just say that I’m not completely anti-social media. Social media has allowed me to keep in touch with friends from all over the world – to track their travels, and share in their successes and sorrows.

It is a tool that has brought about incredible social reform; it’s allowed the greatest ideas to emerge from the humblest of places by giving both a platform and an audience to people who did not have one before. It has revolutionized the way we communicate, think, advertise, and bring about change. That’s really cool.

But it can also be incredibly harmful. It has exasperated issues revolving around body and self-image, and given bullies an easy, non-contact mechanism through which to cause extreme emotional harm. That’s really dangerous.

Any social media platform has the power to be both productive or destructive, depending on intent. But how does social media function on a smaller scale for the average user? For the hundreds of thousands of females ages 15 to 25 who make up the majority of Justin Bieber’s following.

In this particular market, Instagram deserves our special attention.

My choice to refrain from Instagram was not initially intentional. It is not in an attempt to place myself above those who use it. My parents have always been strict about internet use, causing me to remain absent in the social media world for a large majority of my life.

In ninth grade I finally created a Facebook, and as time passed and my parents’ reigns loosened, I found that I was still Instagram-less, and still perfectly content.

I don’t think Instagram is pointless. I’ve seen it used as a great tool for small businesses, and from what I’ve seen of National Geographic’s Instagram, it can be pretty incredible.

But on an individual level, from one college student in the suburbs to another, I have a hard time accepting the way ‘my people’ use Instagram.

I’ve watched from the periphery as my friends have engaged in their virtual worlds, and I’ve come to wonder if there is something I am missing out on. But the more I learn of this world, the less I care to join it.

I cannot wrap my head around the concept of Instagram drama (he posted a picture with another girl, she tagged all of her friends but me, she edited her arms to look thinner, etc.).

I have watched dumbfounded as people blow up over these thumbnail-size pictures, while in the real world they hardly have any sense of importance. You can’t touch them, smell them, or punch them in the face. You can press delete and they cease to exist.

But while they are there, their stats, in terms of comments and likes, hold extreme power over us.

Our sense of importance centers around our social media activity. Our character is no longer defined by our own personal sense of self, but by how others view us and our ‘aesthetically pleasing’ lives.

You’re adventurous if your pictures are on top of mountains, fun and crazy if they’re from parties and nights out, kind and loving if they’re pictures with your family and closest friends.

And if you didn’t post a picture of it, it might as well have not happened.

‘Do it for the Insta,’ is a trend I take particular issue with. (Did you even eat that ridiculously huge ice cream sundae, or did you just buy it to take a picture of it and then let the food go to waste?)

Our Instagram selves are not authentic versions of us, they are false and entirely fabricated. We hi-light the ideal moments in out lives, and in doing do, erase the mundane – the real.

We can airbrush, filter, and thin-ify ourselves to unrecognizable, indistinguishable clones of one another. We can pretend to enjoy hiking when in reality we complained the entire time. We can give off the impression of being a cultural and worldly socialite, even though we spent the entire trip stalking our ex’s Instagram.

To the guy who deleted his Instagram picture because it didn’t get 100 likes, to the girl who won’t post the picture with the incredible scenery because you think your legs look fat, I’m looking at you. You are so much better than this.

Do not let Instagram stop you from being your authentic self, and do not let it stop you from being proud of that authentic self. The people who like you in real life are more important than the people who like your Instagram in the hopes of getting likes back.

At the end of the day, your Instagram life is artificial. Try not posting a picture for a month – I dare you. I promise, you won’t cease to exist.