Last year, I deleted my Facebook. Like many who have done so, I felt a weight lift from my shoulders, and I haven’t regretted it a single day since.
But how could I delete Instagram? Yes, they’re owned by Facebook. Yes, it gives me anxiety, albeit of a different kind than Facebook, and I almost always feel worse after having been on the app, in spite of the photos I genuinely enjoy seeing and the comments I’m grateful to receive.
However—how am I supposed to grow my “brand” without it? Maybe I can’t. Maybe quitting Instagram and Twitter will be a bad thing for my career. Still, in this year of heinous things I can’t control, this channel of emotional distress is one I can turn off. Social networks are a distraction and an emotional drain on me. They don’t actually help me feel more connected to my friends and family.
Besides, the truth is, it isn’t helping my career right now anyway. I’m getting engagement from less than 6% of my Instagram followers, and I can’t exactly shove my posts in the faces of the 94% who aren’t seeing them because they didn’t like or comment on them enough to convince Instagram they actually wanted to see them. I’m not reaching new people at all, let alone clients or customers—if anything, the hashtags I use get me random likes only from other artists. Appreciated, but they probably don’t have money to spare any more than I do.
As for Twitter? I started a new account because I’m publishing under a new name, and frankly, my old account had gotten too large and unwieldy. I couldn’t keep up with everyone—which is also why I split my Instagram into a personal and a professional account. But my new Twitter account tanked hard given that I started it just before 2020 began, and I haven’t been able to bear being on it unless I’m specifically doom-scrolling. No engagement there, either.
The bet I’m making is this: if I make art I love, and submit it regularly to agents or publishers or galleries, that will help my career. If I nurture direct contact with my friends and family, that will help me feel more connected.
This is the right choice for me, at this moment in time. It is not meant to be a commentary on how anyone else uses social networks.
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If we’re friends and you’d like to be pen pals—actual letter-writing pen pals—please reach out through the contact form on this site to swap mailing addresses.
All my love to all of you,
Neil