Instagram is made for your attention, not your creativity.
As soon as I got my head around that little nugget it all changed for me.
This is something that has been on my mind for quite a long time but especially in the last year, as someone who has used Instagram both as a consumer and as a business it’s all gotten a bit uncomfortable.
At the beginning of 2026 feeds and YouTube videos were flooded with people sharing that they were “going analogue for 2026″. People are actively choosing to take a step away from the attention, and soul-sucking apps and getting back to living life a little bit more! Paired alongside the conversations that are taking place around delaying the use of smart phones and social media for children plus the important and controversial dramas and documentaries being aired at the moment there is definitely a real shift in the air.
But let’s take it back to the beginning. I joined Instagram around 2016 just as I was starting my business. I was a little late to the party as it launched in 2010 and it took me a little while to get my head around it. However I could see the huge potential for using this app to help me grow my business. First though, I used it as a consumer.
And boy did I consume!! But that is the point. Social media, I’m primarily talking about Instagram and Facebook here, I never got on with TikTok, is designed to hold your attention, not to encourage your creativity.
In the early days it felt like a lovely way to share a bit about what you’re getting up to with friends and family, then the people and businesses you’d follow that had similar interests. It quickly became a fantastic tool for the sewing community. You could follow a pattern company and the hashtags for their patterns to get loads of ideas and inspiration, seeing garments in different fabrics and on different bodies to get an idea of what it would look like on you.
The sewing community started growing through challenges like Me Made May, friendships were forged through connecting with people in DMs and comments and sometimes these friendships would continue in real life as well. So it definitely did do some good, and probably still does for some people.
I’m not really sure when it all changed – was it when stories or reels were introduced? When hashtags stopped working or when your feed inexplicably became saturated with things you hadn’t actually asked to see?
At some point this tiny little device in my pocket became like an extra limb. I would head to bed with my phone (because it was my alarm) and lose an hour scrolling. When my alarm went off next to me in the morning the first thing I’d do is check social media. I checked it whilst the kettle was boiling, every few minutes whilst I was working, whilst watching TV, even whilst going to the toilet.
Was I scared I was going to miss out on something important? Or was it the dopamine hit of constant entertainment? Short form video (reels) are addictive. They are usually fast paced, funny, aesthetically pleasing or they stir some kind of emotion. Their length is designed to hit the sweet spot of keeping your attention before moving onto the next thing.
Nine times out of ten I would open the app telling myself I was searching for inspiration either for my next sewing project or for work but was losing hours of time stuck in a never ending doomscrolling loop of videos that had absolutely nothing to do with sewing!! An insane waste of time, not good for mental health and not something I want my daughter growing up with.
Before social media, a business could really only grow through traditional media like magazines, newspapers, radio ads etc. Suddenly there was this world where you could directly talk to potential customers, grow a following and build a business.
I can’t tell you the number of courses I did around “how to grow a business on Instagram”. From making sure your feed is aesthetic and cohesive, how to style a flat-lay photo and how to use hashtags in the early days to how to show up in stories so your audience get to know you and how to film and edit reels… honestly the list goes on!
I felt like I had to share almost every tiny detail of my life… but make it interesting! Purchasing things I didn’t really need just to talk about it, sharing my food, my routines. But life isn’t always exciting or interesting. Sometimes life is just life, and that’s normal!! I remember being told to treat stories like my own personal TV show, to help build trust and likability.
And that’s all well and good… if it works. But it only worked up to a point and then I just constantly felt like I was shouting into the void. Days when I didn’t feel like I had anything interesting or exciting to say left me feeling deflated and I would spend an insane amount of time taking photos and videos and trying to come up with clever ideas for reels that were highly edited.
Even if those reels got a good number of likes or views or comments, it stopped there and didn’t actually help me grow my business so it didn’t matter how much time or effort I was putting into social media… that is when a “what am I doing here?” moment was switched.
Over the last few years I began to pull back, in small ways at first. I purchased a real, actual alarm clock and left my phone charging in the kitchen – that was a game changer for the quality of sleep and getting back to reading for pleasure!
I started setting time limits on my phone so that I couldn’t use certain apps for longer than 30 minutes but eventually I honestly just got so mad every time I logged on.
Hashtags no longer work, there is a world of bizarre AI generated photos and video that leave you questioning reality, you spend too much time wondering why your own house isn’t as tidy as theirs, or why you aren’t having as many magical trips and holidays, and wanting to purchase whatever the influencers are selling that is somehow going to make your life better.
All in all… it is not working for me as a business or as a consumer any more. I don’t feel connected to the sewing community there – and with more and more meet ups, events like frocktails, in person and online sewing socials taking place where people are able to actually talk to each other and connect in a more genuine way – I feel like I’m not the only one starting to move away from this type of social media.
Yet… I’m stuck! As a business, you still need a presence on social media because currently, people still head to places like Instagram to see what you’re all about. So, what do I do? My current set up is that I have deleted the apps off my phone, and only use them on my computer. As I have a business account I can set posts through Meta and reply to comments and DMs. Slowly, the fog is lifting and it feels amazing!
A few months ago I did share a post on Instagram (ironic I know) about how I was feeling and the replies made me realise I am absolutely not alone in this. Everyone is craving real interactions, conversations and connections. I am proud that I have built a space where the sewing community can do this but how… without social media do I get the word out there?!
