A couple of months ago, I uninstalled Instagram on my phone. Primarily because it was consuming too much of my time and making me pick phone every now and then.
To do what, one may ask? To watch those reels, wherein teenagers were dancing to stupid songs in the middle of busy streets.
And secondly, to read books. Every time I would try to read a book, my attention span would not last than a few minutes. As if my mind had been drawing energy from Instagram reels. Now, that is what addiction looks like.
I decided to go cold turkey and uninstall Instagram at once. I even deactivated my profile. Could not muster courage to delete the account though.
So I did that and finally managed to finish 5 books in two months, which I were supposed to read in 2020 and then 2021 and so on.
I was reading about India’s independence struggle that led me to parliamentry debates, rare books written in late 19th Century.
There was one book in particular which I wanted to read and it was not available anywhere online. There were few used copies available but they would have cost me a bomb.
So I decided to run a google search to find ebooks for the book. And guess where did I end up during that?
On Instagram. On page 10 of the Google search, There was a guy selling his old copies for a reasonable price. Not cheap but a reasonable price for a book that wasnt available anywhere.
So I installed Instagram, ordered that book and the courier guy dropped it at my doorstep today.
Now, I am hunting similar book sellers on Instagram. Watching a few reels in between too.
I wonder how long would this “reeling and searching” go before I uninstall Instagram again 😀