I'm Deleting Instagram for the 7th Time -(Is This Time Different?). Personal Trainer Reduces Screen Time to Reclaim Attention

I deleted Instagram again. It's the seventh time. I'm not proud of the number, but I'm not ashamed of it either because every single time I've done it, I've found a freedom again, even if it's temporary.

Also, each time I delete my profile, I am a little less willing to hand my attention over to an algorithm that, frankly, does not have my best interests at heart. In fact, I realise just how destructive these tech companies are but that's a story for another day.

By the end of today I'd made a pond in the garden, sat for hours with a close friend, visited family, and had an unhurried coffee where I actually noticed the coffee.

No 'just checking.' No ten minutes disappearing into a scroll and reappearing an hour later wondering where my day went.

This is what my phone gave back to me the moment I stopped letting it take.

The Moment I Knew I Had to Delete Instagram Again

For weeks, my Instagram Explore page had quietly, cleverly, filled itself with comedy videos of topless, hairy-chested (how'd it figure me out so fast) guys doing funny 'comedy' sketches, very mildly funny but really they know their audience and know we're watching because they're very hot and topless.

And I'd watch one, and then, as if by accident, there'd be another, and another. Twenty minutes later...

I never searched for that content and I never followed those accounts on purpose. The algorithm noticed a flicker of attention half a second longer on one video than the last and built an entire feed out of it (and similar content).

It didn't ask what I actually cared about. It just found the fastest route to keep my thumb moving.

These are the moments it becomes glaringly obvious to me, that I am not the customer here. I am the product.

My attention is the commodity being harvested, refined, and sold back to advertisers, and the app doesn't care if what keeps me scrolling makes me a better person, a more present friend or partner, or better at serving people around me, whether that be my clients or someone in need of a friendly chat.

In fact it only cares that I stay and that it takes as much as my attention as possible. It has not the slightest concern for the repercussions.

It's almost funny, (if it wasn't so tragic) how easily "sophisticated" grown adults like us get walked around on a lead by a piece of software built in a lab to exploit dopamine loops.

We laugh at how gullible other people are for scams, then hand over four - or maybe even 8 hours (in one or two cases for me more than 16 hours) a day to something doing exactly the same trick, just slower.

That's when I saw the ridiculousness of it. That's when I closed the app, and then deleted it.

What I Did With the Day Instead

I built a pond. I sat and dug a big hole and make a pretty pond from the baby bath the neighbours chucked out.

If you've read anything else on my blog you'll know I've got a soft spot for wildlife gardening; there's something deeply grounding about creating a habitat rather especially when compared to consuming content on instagram about one.

I also spent real, quality time with my bestie, Mal. No phone face-up on the table between us and no 'sorry, one sec.' We had some very goodconversation that was allowed to wander, and also to go quiet without either of us needing to fill the silence with a screen.

I visited family to drop my mum her tupperware back. They were too busy to care much for my visit, both my mum and dad watching TV in separate rooms. In fact my dad was on two screens.

None of this is extraordinary and that's exactly the point. Most of our lives are not particularly extraordinary but they go missing in the distraction. Today, was not lost for me.

There is A Fear I'm Sitting With

I'm not going to pretend this is a clean win, because I've been here before, yes, six times before, in fact and I know exactly how this story can end up not going to plan.

The real risk isn't that I'll redownload Instagram next week (though, let's be honest, that's always possible).

The real risk is transferring the exact same compulsive reach-for-my-phone habit onto YouTube instead, or maybe watching the news etx. A different app, same twitchy hand, same craving to fill every gap in the day with something.

I've done it before without meaning to where I've deleted the 'bad' app and let the more 'acceptable' one quietly absorb the same hours.

So this time I'm naming that risk out loud, before it happens, rather than pretending it isn't a possibility.

My intention is clear that this isn't about swapping one algorithm for another that's slightly better disguised. It's about the underlying compulsion, the itch to escape the present moment - not just the app that happens to be scratching it this month.

And yes, I'm also aware I might slide back into the old pattern completely.

Delete, feel amazing, feel in control, get complacent, redownload 'I'll be much more disciplined this time' and end up back at the start.

Anyway, fear of relapse isn't a reason not to try, afterall, awareness of the pattern is most of the battle. I'd rather walk in knowing my limitations than pretend I'm immune to falling down.

Why I'm Actually Doing This

Instagram, and similar, is evil, yes, but that's not the main reason.

I'm doing this because I want my attention back and I want to be the one who decides where my mind goes, rather than outsourcing that decision to whichever engineer's team had the best quarter for 'engagement metrics.'

In the Eastern Orthodox tradition, there's a word for this kind of inner watchfulness 'nepsis' - sobriety of mind, a wakeful guarding of the heart against whatever quietly pulls your attention where you didn't choose to send it.

The Eastern Orthodox church Fathers weren't writing about smartphones, obviously, but they may as well have been. Every generation has its 'logismoi', its intrusive, colonising thoughts trying to get a foothold and mine just happen to arrive with push notifications.

Reclaiming that attention isn't a productivity hack. For me, its much closer to spiritual hygiene.

The effect on my mind has been immediate and genuinely startling. There's a specific kind of quiet that settles in within about 48 hours of deleting the app.

There's a lowering of background noise I didn't even realise had become my baseline.

Thoughts get to finish themselves instead of being interrupted by the urge to check something.

Boredom, which I used to treat like an emergency, becomes just... boredom.

That peace of mind is the whole reason I keep coming back to this, attempt after attempt.

What I'm Making Room For

The hours Instagram used to take, I want to give more deliberately to my Bible and to the kind of unhurried reading that an Instagram feed simply cannot coexist with.

You cannot read the Psalms or sit with the Gospels in the same fractured, five-second-attention-span state that a scroll trains into you.

I've written before, on this blog, about what my own screen-time patterns have taught me about behaviour change generally and it's the same principle whether we're talking about a phone, a diet, or a training programme.

I know that you can't out-willpower a compulsive loop.

You have to redesign your environment so the loop has nowhere to attach.

Delete the app.

Replace the space it occupied with something that actually nourishes you. In my case today it was making a pond, a friend, a family visit, a few pages of my bible.

If You're Thinking About Doing the Same

I'm not writing this from some finished, enlightened place.

I'm one relapse away from being wrong about all of it, and I know that. B

I also know that I've had real, tangible success lately, with today being proof of it and that tells me it can be done, even by someone who's failed at it six times already.

Maybe especially by someone who's failed at it six times already.

I have been able to see the patterns on repeat and now I'm better placed than ever to start working with it.

If any part of this sounds familiar such as the twenty minutes that become two hours, the feed that somehow knows exactly what will keep you watching and the low hum of guilt every time you put the phone down, you're not alone.

You're responding entirely rationally to a system engineered by extremely smart people to make you respond exactly this way.

Delete it.

See what your day looks like without it.

Build something. Sit with someone.

You might be surprised how much of your life was just waiting underneath the scroll the whole time.

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I'm Marios, a personal trainer based in Arnos Grove, North London. A lot of the mindset work I do with clients, around habits, compulsive patterns, and reclaiming a sense of control over your own choices isn't so different from the work in this post. If you'd like to read more on this theme, have a look at [what my own screen-time habits have taught me about behaviour change](https://www.mariosiacovou.co.uk/post/what-my-own-phone-addiction-therapy-is-teaching-me-about-behaviour-change-and-what-it-means-for-you). And if you're ready to build a bit more structure for your body or your habits into your week, you can [book a £40 consultation and trial session](https://mariosiacovoupersonaltraining.as.me/) or [WhatsApp me for a free chat](https://wa.me/447739418718).