Every time i was low, i would open instagram

When I was in school, everyone was addicted to their phones, social media especially. I would spend hours a day scrolling through Instagram. Every time I was bored or a bit low, I would open Instagram and end up scrolling through other people’s posts for hours, becoming a constant loop. Instead of helping me, it made me feel worse, although I didn’t realise it at the time. I would see people living their lives that would seem way more exciting than my own. Seeing how people would use social media to show off and glamorise their lives affected my self-worth and confidence, especially revolving around body images.

I first downloaded Instagram when I was 10 years old, and at that age, you do not know how edited and filtered everything was. I wish someone had explained to me how staged everything was and how that can affect your mental health, as I used to take everything I saw on social media at face value. I wish I had questioned what I was consuming through social media on a day-to-day basis, because it began to shape me in an unhealthy way.