Delete it instead. I’ve been deleting any but text medias and I just can’t believe how much time people spend on it.

For reference, Instagram lets you see how much time you spend on the app, daily and on average.

I was shocked when I found out I averaged almost 18 minutes per day. I just didn’t feel like I spent so much time on it, but then you start realizing all of the pauses and voids it filled here and there and it was almost 20 minutes per day. I started watching the time my SO spent on it, almost two hours per day. Commuting? Instagram. Before falling asleep? Instagram. After coming home from work? Instagram. That’s 15% of her day, of her life, spent on that.

I cannot but have a grim outlook on all of this. Do yourself a favor and set some examples. This whole culture of attention seeking has to die.

Wow 18 minutes per day? How did you recover from this shock?

LOL seriously kids these days spend like 5+ hours per day on these apps.

I understand the sarcasm, but the point i was trying to make is that I would've never thought I was looking at it for more than 5.

I thought or felt I was just checking it few times, not even everyday, and yet that wasn't true.

So imho averaging 18 minutes on something you're actively trying to limit or avoid is quite telling of the time sink it is without you realizing.

> For reference, Instagram lets you see how much time you spend on the app, daily and on average.

Does HN have this feature?

This really is the worst part of Facebook's approach to products - it's constantly trying to inject "recommended" content into my experience, which ultimately IMO is the precise problem with this form of social media.

I don't want to use social media to interact with total strangers - I follow people I know IRL, or businesses I frequent, or just generally people/accounts that I've been recommended from sources I trust.

This "HEY YOU MUST MEET THIS STRANGER" thing that FB pioneered and that Instagram seems big into now is the root of so many problems. It encourages the kinds of negative interactions that define the FB experience (rude/abusive comments on one's posts from rando strangers? Hello!)

There's been much said about the coarsening of discourse post-social-media, and I have to say this constant drumbeat of getting everyone to talk to every stranger is one of the primary causes of it.

Exactly. I just use instagram to msg people who aren't on Telegram and other services as I don't have FB. I don't think I've ever used the feed before, simply because of seeing ads. I never watch stories either. It's a dumpster fire, and any algorithm to show me stuff is a mistake, full stop. I only want to see my friends stuff chronologically, nothing else on the app matters for me.

I genuinely don't understand why they do this. Sure, keep the ads, whatever, but make it chronological. Too many busy bodies I guess?

I think the idea is that ads slip in more easily with an algorithm. Last time I used FB properly you could get the following kind of news feed:

actual post from friend, friend actively liked a post from a business, ad from a business a friend previously liked

Essentially posts from unknown accounts look less out of place this way

> I genuinely don't understand why they do this.

$

s/$/$$$/

> I don't think I've ever used the feed before, simply because of seeing ads.

This is surprisingly disciplined and extreme. Kudos (i think? Can't quite tell if you're missing out due to ideology or holding good ground).

> any algorithm to show me stuff is a mistake, full stop. I only want to see my friends stuff chronologically, nothing else on the app matters for me.

> I genuinely don't understand why they do this

Unfortunately, it seems like you're probably in the minority there. Algo feeds are way easier to ensure the user always sees something new (which is somewhat important), and you can still make it only people you follow (so still only your friends).

>This is surprisingly disciplined and extreme. Kudos (i think? Can't quite tell if you're missing out due to ideology or holding good ground).

I don't think it's extreme as it's passive not active (I'm not focusing on NOT using it). I just don't care. I care about the feed as much as you care about mastering Nunchaku: very close to 0.

>Unfortunately, it seems like you're probably in the minority there. Algo feeds are way easier to ensure the user always sees something new (which is somewhat important), and you can still make it only people you follow (so still only your friends).

Time to raise $X billion for "Instagram, but with no algos". What I would like is an orange bar delineating where my feed last updated, like slack and discord. That way I can click a button to scroll me to the bottom of all the new posts, and I can scroll up until theres nothing left. That would be fantastic.

This is why I eventually gave up on Instagram.

I’d carefully curated my feed to what I was interested in, following a load of really good abstract and generative artists, until it would suddenly decide that what I really wanted to see was nailcare tips or whatever.

After a few days of me actively pruning content the feed would settle down, but it happened more and more frequently until I couldn’t be bothered anymore.

It's worse than TV, it's home shopping network.