Why I stopped using Instagram the way everyone else does
By Cajetan
I've spent most of my career thinking about how people use software.
I've led product design at companies with tens of millions of users. I've sat in rooms where we debated how to make people engage more, stay longer, come back sooner. I know how the sausage is made.
And I still found myself using Instagram exactly the way they designed it.
What Instagram used to be
I want to be fair about this. Instagram was genuinely good for a while.
There was a version of it where you opened the app and saw photos from people you knew. Dinner tables. Road trips. Dogs. Kids growing up. Ordinary moments from real people in your life.
That version made me feel closer to people I cared about. I'd see a photo from a college friend I hadn't talked to in a year and feel like I'd checked in. That felt valuable.
That version is mostly gone.
What it became
At some point the feed stopped being about the people I followed.
Reels from strangers. Suggested posts from accounts I'd never heard of. Ads dressed to look like content. Content designed to provoke a reaction because provoked people keep scrolling.
I'd open the app to see what my friends were up to and spend twenty minutes watching clips of people I'd never met and would never meet.
The algorithm is very good at its job. Its job is not to connect you with the people you care about. Its job is to keep you on the app.
Those two things used to overlap more than they do now.
The moment something shifted
It wasn't dramatic.
I posted a photo. Something small, a moment from an evening that felt worth sharing. I checked back a few hours later to see if anyone I knew had seen it.
The post had a handful of likes. None of them were from the people I'd actually wanted to see it. The algorithm had buried it. Meanwhile my feed was full of content from accounts with hundreds of thousands of followers that I'd never consciously chosen to follow.
I sat with that for a minute. I'd posted something personal for the people in my life, and the platform had decided that wasn't interesting enough to show them. But it had plenty of room for content it thought would make me angry enough or entertained enough to stay.
I didn't delete the app. But I stopped pretending it was doing what I wanted it to do.
The distinction that matters
I still use Instagram. For theLove, it's a marketing channel. I post there to reach people who don't know theLove exists yet. That's a legitimate use of the platform, and I'm deliberate about it.
What I stopped doing is using it the way it wants me to use it. I don't scroll the feed. I don't open it looking for connection. I don't post personal moments there expecting the right people to see them.
I treat it like a billboard. You put something on a billboard, you don't expect it to have a conversation with you.
The people who talk about quitting Instagram often describe two different things. Some quit the app entirely. Others quit the illusion. The illusion that Instagram is a place to stay close to the people you love, that it will show your posts to the people who matter, that the time you spend there is time well spent on real relationships.
Quitting the illusion is the more useful move. And you don't have to delete anything to do it.
Why I built theLove
I started building theLove in the fall of 2025.
The thing I'd actually wanted from Instagram was simple. The thing it had originally delivered and then quietly stopped delivering. I wanted to stay close to the people who mattered to me. I wanted to share ordinary moments with them. I wanted to see theirs.
That's a small ask. Instagram used to fulfill it. It stopped being able to because its business model required something different from its product.
So I built the thing I actually wanted.
theLove launched on February 14, 2026. It's a private social network for the people you choose to have in your world. Chronological feed. No ads. No algorithm deciding what's worth showing you. Posts, photos, galleries, groups, and events. A paid service, because paid means we work for you.
What I use now, and for what
Instagram: for reaching new people. A marketing tool. Nothing more.
theLove: for the people I actually want to stay close to. The dinners and the ordinary Tuesdays and the moments that aren't for a feed of strangers.
Newsletters and a few trusted sites: for news and what's happening in the world.
The phone is quieter. The time I used to spend scrolling went somewhere else. I don't miss Instagram for connection, because I stopped expecting it to provide that.
What I missed was what Instagram used to be. That product doesn't really exist there anymore.
It exists here.