15 Emotional Stages Of How Instagram Takes Over Your Life

As far as social media platforms go, Instagram is one of everyone's favourites, simply because of all the things you can do with it. Text-heavy mediums like Twitter and Facebook are great if you're looking to share your thoughts, but sometimes, you just want to share your fantastic brunch dish with everyone - enter Instagram. You can take a shot of an amazing moment in your life, stick a witty caption on there, and just enjoy sharing it with all your followers.

There's just one problem with Instagram - it offers a curated look into someone's life. So, if you spend a little too much time browsing, you might soon find yourself wondering why you're not dining exclusively on artisanal baked goods and lounging around in $500 sweat pants. You question why you can't afford to go on a vacation every month, and why you don't look that amazing in a swimsuit. It seems innocent at first, but if you linger too much on Instagram, even the strongest women can go through a bit of a downward spiral.

Here are 15 stages of the Instagram downward spiral. Not that you've ever experienced this downward spiral. Nope, that's for other people. (Don't worry - your secret is safe with us).

15 Stage 1: the happy bubble

Let's face it - Instagram can be a lot of fun. You get to scroll through endless photos of people whose photos you enjoy checking out. If you follow countless foodie accounts, you'll get tons of recipe inspiration. If you're all about fashion, you can follow every major designer, blogger and magazine and create a fashion-packed feed to enjoy. So at first, when you open up the Instagram app, you're all happy thoughts. It's great! There are so many fantastic photos! You're handing out likes left, right and center! Look at all the places people are travelling and the delicious things they're eating and the gorgeous outfits they're wearing! I mean, how could it possibly ever be a negative thing? Anyone who says Instagram sends you into a downward spiral is clearly wrong, because you're having the best time ever and feeling good vibes only as you scroll through the photos in your feed.

14 Stage 2: the first flutterings of insecurity

All of a sudden, those perfect photos you're checking out seem a little bit intimidating. Your friend posts an outfit that looks super chic, and you're just lounging around in your sweatpants and a ratty old long-sleeved tee you've had forever. You've been dreaming of a tropical vacation for months, and you see four shots in a row of someone's sunny vacation, complete with icy drinks and a beach that looks like straight up paradise. A blogger you follow shares all the designer swag she got from a company, and you wish that someone was sending you expensive things for free - you have to save up and buy that stuff! You start to ask yourself why your life isn't like that. Why aren't your outfits always ready for a spontaneous #ootd shot?

13 Stage 3: the self survey

Okay, all that looking at other people's feed is too stressful, so you take a little break and check out your own shots for a while. You scroll through your witty profile, and are suddenly struck with the thought that maybe it isn't as witty as you had believed - maybe it just makes you sound weird. You check a recent selfie that you thought was totally amazing, and find that you only got 3 likes. Seriously - three. Your avocado toast got more likes than that. Did you look awful? Or is it just that no one likes you? Are people scrolling straight past your photos because they're terrible? Are your captions too long, or maybe just too boring? Are people sick of seeing pictures of your dog (no, that can't be it)? Oh, god. Suddenly you feel like everyone low key hates you and just isn't telling you. I mean, why else wouldn't they like your pictures?

12 Stage 4: the like-for-like

Okay, you obviously can't dwell on the thought that everyone in your life hates you because that's no way to live your life. No, you get a sudden burst of inspiration. Clearly, the answer to all your problems is just being a bit more active. I mean, you have been a little lax on your comments and likes lately - and why would people bother liking your pictures if you don't return the favour? That's obviously the reason. So, you go through your feed on a like frenzy, throwing out likes to all your friends and the people you barely know. I mean, if you like that super famous blogger's post, she'll probably like yours back… . Right? Even though you're just one of 15,000 likes? It can't hurt. You pay a little extra attention to your regular friends without hundreds of thousands of followers, because let's be honest - you need to increase your chances that they'll like your picture back.

11 Stage 5: the staged photo

Okay, you've been looking at this all wrong. Clearly, the problem is just that your current pictures are a little uninspiring. What you need is some fresh, new pictures. So, you come up with an idea. You drive twenty minutes to buy a loaf of bread just to photograph it alongside the coffee cup you bought last week at Anthropologie. You spend half an hour applying more make-up. You change your outfit seven times. You realize that your coffee table looks a little dirty in the shot, so you quickly spend fifteen minutes cleaning it so it's the best surface. You realize the lighting isn't great, so you move over to a spot near the window where the natural light can shine through. You hope that your neighbours don't see you standing on a kitchen chair, trying to take a perfect photo of a slice of avocado toast from above. You hope they haven't seen you standing by the window trying to get a selfie in perfect lighting for twenty three minutes. You've taken 233 pictures. You are embarrassing.

10 Stage 6: the filter queen

The photos are nice, but they're still missing something - filters. You don't know why you didn't realize before - clearly, the reason you're not blowing up on Instagram is because your feed is a mix of photos in different lighting. Consistency is key, right? You need your feed to all look on brand, like the famous bloggers and social media superstars. So, after carefully whittling down your mass of pictures to a few select shots, you filter the heck out of them. You try out Clarendon. You try out Reyes. You cycle through every available filter trying to see which one makes you photo look incredible. Sure, it's kind of cheating - but everyone does it. You thank whoever created the filter as you upload three new images to your account, all heavily filtered and looking insanely good. With photos like that, who isn't going to like them, right? You sit back and wait for the comments to pour in.

9 Stage 7: the unbearable wait

Okay, so, those comments and likes didn't really start pouring in immediately. In fact, you saw a bunch of photos that were posted later than yours which have already gotten more likes. Did you pick the wrong filter? Is artisanal toast officially over? Do you just not understand what's popular on Instagram? Oh, god. You're old. You're officially out of touch. You're going to be that weird older person saying slang that's five years out of date. You think back to your captions and wonder if you accidentally said 'fleek.' Wait, fleek is out, right? Should you have said that your avocado toast was lit? Is avocado out? The waiting is even harder than your one-person photoshoot. You wish you could just go up to your followers in person and ask why they don't like your pictures. Although that might seem desperate, so on second thought, nix that idea. Ugh.

8 Stage 8: the spring clean

It's shameful, and you don't want to admit that you do this, but you decide it's time to go through your feed and delete everything that has barely any likes. After all, if every image there has at least 100 likes, someone checking out your feed will assume that you're more popular than you are. They don't need to know you deleted all the unpopular posts. They'll never know. In fact, it'll make you seem like you post less than you do, like you're so busy living a fabulous life that you don't have time for social media. This was a good strategy. You scroll through and delete the unpopular outfit posts and brunch shots and only leave the ones that struck a chord with your followers. You delete the photo of your dog that no one cared about, even though you thought it was going to be a hit. You feel guilt, but hey - you need to be ruthless.

7 Stage 9: the target

After you've purged your own feed a bit, you start scrolling through everyone else's shots a bit as a kind of palate cleanser. Soon, a thought pops up in your mind - you wonder what your frenemy from years back is doing now, or whether your ex-boyfriend found someone new. A little sleuthing and before you know it your curiosity gets the best of you and you're checking out their page. You start going through the pictures in order, piecing together a bit of a timeline of their lives, as shared on their Instagram account. They recently went to Mexico on a vacation - jealous. They also got a dog that's adorable, but yours is way cuter, so you win that one. He's posted a few shots of a really gorgeous girl but you can't figure out if it's a friend or a girlfriend because the captions are really vague. You could go back to your regular feed but you're sucked in now.

6 Stage 10: the stalk

Okay, what went from sheer curiosity and browsing through someone's recent pictures has turned into full on stalking territory. You go back - like, 252 weeks back. The archives. You suddenly want to know everything. I mean, their life can't be as perfect as their recent photos seem to suggest, right? Surely, there's something in the archives that proves not everything was roses and sunshine. You keep scrolling and scrolling for some nugget of comfort, but every picture looks flawless, and their life seems impossibly perfect. Still, you keep scrolling. You're at 400 weeks back. You didn't even know that Instagram had been around this long. It's like they're aging backwards. It's like you're watching a movie about their lives. You know everything about them. Despite the fact that you haven't spoken in years, you now know their go-to brunch order is eggs benedict and a huge latte. You know everything.

5 Stage 11: the archive like

This is, without question, one of the most terrifying things that can happen on Instagram. You're just scrolling through the archives, as you have been for you don't even want to know how long, and there's a particular shot that catches your eye. You check it out and, somehow, your thumb goes rogue and hits the like button. You freeze, staring at the date in the corner - 524 weeks. Oh my god. You unlike it really, really quickly but it's probably already too late. They're going to know you were looking way, way back into the archives. Oh my god how embarrassing. You may as well just show up at their front door and admit that you've been stalking them online. You may as well just like every single photo now, because they're going to think you're legit obsessed with them. Why didn't you just stick to your own feed? Why? Why did you have to go poking around?

4 Stage 12: the thumb sprain

You don't want to admit it, but you've been scrolling so long that your thumb actually hurts a little bit. Instead of putting the phone down and going to do something else, though, you just switch to your other hand. Your thumb feels like you've been wrestling someone in a thumb war competition for far too long. Your brain flashes to those news stories about people injuring themselves playing Candy Crush for hours on end, but those are probably just the extreme cases, right? I mean, you haven't been on Instagram that long. You give your thumb a little test wiggle as you keep scrolling. You briefly wonder if they make thumb splints. And then, of course, you notice the chipped nail polish on your thumb nail and how it definitely doesn't compare to the picture perfect manicure shot you just scrolled past. I mean, what is even the point?

3 Stage 13: the like shopping spree

Okay, you would never admit doing this, and you didn't even really know this was a thing, but you heard once that it's possible to buy likes. And you think back to the thousands of likes some of the people you follow have, versus the fact that it's a struggle to even get your like count into the triple digits. I mean, who would even know if you bought a few likes? You won't go crazy - it would be super obvious if you went from having 74 likes to having 7,400 on every photo. However, why not just bump them up a little bit, at least into the three digits? It would send the impression that people love your photos, which might even convince people to give you more likes organically. You do a bit of research to find out more about it. You can neither confirm nor deny actually buying the likes.

2 Stage 14: you like your own picture

You're having a bit of a dark moment. For some reason, though your make-up was on point and your filter game was strong, your selfies just never look as good as some of the other selfies on your feed. Is it just your face? Are you just naturally not as photogenic? You're spiralling hard, so you like your own picture for a little confidence boost, and then you immediately spiral harder. I mean, it's like giving yourself a thumbs up in the mirror - just really, really sad. You unlike your photo. Then you remember that article you read about self-love and positivity and you like your photo again. You hope no one notices. You wonder if anyone else ever likes their own photos. You wonder what it says about you that you did. You question whether you should make a hair appointment next week - I mean, maybe it's your hair? Maybe you'd be more photogenic with bangs?

1 Stage 15: Instagram hangover

Despite the fact that there's a little clock at the top of your phone telling you what time it is, you've somehow been ignoring it - maybe on purpose. Suddenly, you glance up and realize that six hours have passed. Literally - six hours. You could have run like, a bazillion miles. You could have watched two full movies. You could have cleaned your entire house. There's so much you could have accomplished in that times span, and instead, you've just been parked on the couch, scrolling through your phone. No wonder you don't have good Instagram photos to share - you're not out in the world doing things. Oh, god. I mean, what are you even doing with your life? What is even the point? That's six hours of your life that you're never going to get back. You remember that article you read the other day about the light from screens aging your skin, and you head to the mirror to see if you're looking noticeable droopier. It's a low point. It's definitely a low point.