Did the same. Perfect life. Still sort of doomscrolling HN however... ;)

(and it is very good for the phone battery life, one more thing you less take care about after such move)

This. I have been social media free for many years now and want to encourage others to do the same. Engagement algorithms, selling influence to the highest bidder, and misinformation alone ~should~ be enough to sway most, but it's also just a big waste of time.

What I do instead: send pictures to friends/family via various messaging platforms, get news via RSS (self-hosted Miniflux), run pinchflat to download youtube videos from a very select group of channels (no comments section, no suggested videos, sponsorblock to remove the annoying bits), and use a lot of the extra time I was wasting to read, workout, and engage in my various hobbies.

Some other helpful things I do with my Android phone: set to grayscale, uninstalled any time wasters (youtube, news, games), use an app called BuzzKill to limit distracting notifications (some notifications disable during work hours, some apps have a cooldown so they can only notify once every 15 minutes for example), setup notifications every 5 minutes when using an app that could be used for time wasting (browser mainly). These time wasting alerts (done via Tasker) are a nice reminder of time wasting as the amount of time can easily go unnoticed.

PS I also don't feel like I have a boring life. I have many IRL friends, hobbies, and a close-nit family. All these steps have aided in finding fulfillment with what I have.

My goal is not avoiding doomscrolling though (I don’t do that on instagram in the first place).

Other than direct contact I like to also have more casual and indirect interactions. Instagram works well for me here, I’m curious if anyone is doing similar things with any other apps.

But sure, if you feel that instagram or social media is causing you more problems than benefits, absolutely do something different.

I also switched to Nothing(tm). Being slightly out of the loop with friends and current events is jarring at first, but also markedly less stressful. Over time, the jarring part went away. I have to make more of an effort to keep up with friends, but this means I have been having actual conversations with people and making plans to do stuff again, whereas before I felt I had nothing to talk about and already knew what everyone was up to because I was monitoring them.

I love being unplugged from friends like that. Then when I see them I have something to talk about and catch up on.