About three months ago, I decided to mute everyone’s Instagram story except close friends and family members and I must say, I feel better.

Here’s why:

It takes a lot less time to check the application

It is almost inevitable not to open the app unless you’ve been too busy during the day that you forgot to check your phone. Don’t worry, it is not just you! A recent study shows that people check their smartphones 150 times a day on average. So, these checks sometimes end up being hours spent on Instagram. One of the things that keep you on screen is going through people’s stories. They are tempting to look at since they are light and there for only 24-hours but when you open one of them the program starts showing everybody’s IG story and you waste too much time without even realizing.

Now after muting the stories of nearly 95% of the people that I follow, I still enjoy Instagram with accounts like Artsytecture but I am less exposed to what my friends eat every single day. Muting them also sends their story back in a faded tone and even if you open one of them, it will not automatically show you the next person’s story. So you can eliminate what you want to see.

I don’t have to delete the app

In the past, I used to check my Instagram feed because I didn’t want to do what I should be doing at that moment like studying and preparing for my university entrance exams. So, I would delete the app from my phone to concentrate on the task and every once in a while I would download it back. Those days, I didn’t shut down my account because I knew I would get back to using Instagram soon and sending requests to follow every friend again would be a loss of my time and create a confusion on my friends’ side. Now, that the app doesn’t take much of my time I don’t feel the necessity to delete my account or remove the app from my phone.

I feel less anxious

Instagram is a medium where you’ll find out that everyone you know is living an amazing life and you are the only one who is not enjoying the party. Joking aside, people are prone to showing off, it’s just their nature. I even heard it in some talk about happiness that in order for a person to be happy, it is not enough that they are doing good. They need to know that they are doing better off than other people. So you are actually being exposed to a lot of carefully selected life fragments of people who are trying to prove something. It’s not healthy for you after a while. Ever since I muted a lot of the people, I feel less anxious and more satisfied with my life. Also, I don’t feel the unnecessary force on me to share everything I do, just to let other people know that I do cool stuff, too.

I hope this article gives you a little bit of inspiration and a courage if needed to at least mute some noise around your social media, too.

Don’t forget, you are more than your shared story! Enough & Loved.

Images: @daria, @robin_rednine, @socialcut, @priscilladupreez