All the feelings about a work-in-progress relationship with social media and screens.

You’re listening to Burnt Toast!

We are Virginia Sole-Smith and Corinne Fay, and it’s time for your April Indulgence Gospel!

These episodes are usually only for paid subscribers but we’re releasing this one for free! If you like it, you can get even more Virginia by becoming a paid Burnt Toast subscriber.

There has been so much conversation in online spaces over the past few months about divesting from social media. Folks are dropping X, Facebook, Instagram as a form of protest against billionaire tech bros like Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg. And a lot of us are also feeling the need to doom scroll less as a form of self care. Plus, when Tiktok drops a new Chubby filter, it doesn’t really make us want to be there.

So today we’re chatting about how we’re both feeling about social media. What are we divesting from? How’s it going? And does any of this feel like a diet?

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Episode 187 Transcript

Corinne

Well, you’ve really been a leader in this field.

Virginia

A pioneer, would we say?

Corinne

You’ve been a pioneer in the field of quitting Instagram.

Virginia

Since December? I feel I cannot really claim pioneer status for something I’ve been doing for three months! But let’s start at the beginning.

What was your starting point in feeling like you wanted to start reevaluating your relationship with social media?

Corinne

Well, to be honest, I don’t know. I still feel mixed about it. We maybe should start by acknowledging that the “quitting Instagram” conversation just feels like it’s been going on forever.

Virginia

Forever!

Corinne

It feels like it has been years of people being like, “I’m so tired of Instagram blah, blah, blah.” And I’m someone who has always sort of felt like, “whatever, it’s fine.” I don’t necessarily feel like I go down an Instagram rabbit hole and then feel terrible about myself. Maybe in some specific circumstances.

So maybe for me, it started with our screen time episode.

Virginia

Where we looked at how much time we were spending on our phones. That was a hard day for both of us.

Corinne

I saw some stat recently that was like, if you spend two hours a day on Instagram, at the end of your life, you will have spent 10 years on Instagram. And that felt a little bleak.

Virginia

Okay, I don’t love that.

Corinne

Yeah, I didn’t love it. But there are also things I enjoy about Instagram. I do have a lot of friends and community there. SoI thought, well, why don’t I just delete it for the weekend?

Virginia

And that’s what you’ve started with.

Corinne

And that’s what I’ve started with.

What about you? What was your starting point?

Virginia

Mine was a little bit of a whim. I’ve been trying different things for a few years now to manage my relationship with Instagram specifically and with my phone more generally. And some of that was realizing that as a business strategy, it was not serving me to keep putting a lot of time into making reels and elaborate content for Instagram. Instagram is so siloed. It wasn’t translating to people coming over and finding Burnt Toast and the podcast. Maybe a handful of people do every week. But it’s not our main driver, and never has been.

So once I connec