This week, real news took a break to make room for not-actually-news when Kendall Jenner quit Instagram. And honestly, the only person more shocked than I was that we were making this a massive story was Kendall Jenner herself.
“It’s so crazy to me that it even became huge news like that,” she told Ellen on Wednesday. “Like, I have no idea how that happened. I guess I didn’t expect it.”
So why’d she do it? Easy, you guys: girlfriend needed a “bit of a break.”
“I’m always on it,” she continued. “I would wake up in the morning and look at it first thing; I would go to bed and it was the last thing I would look at. I felt a little too dependent on it. So I kind of wanted to take a minute. It’s a detox.”
And so why is it news? Probably because we’re all jealous. The last week especially has been an exercise in social media terribleness, but where Kendall can just check out of Instagram, we’re stuck. Sure, we can all quit Instagram too, but it’s also our only source of social media joy. The rest? The cold, hard facts (and opinions), delivered to us by Facebook (woof) and Twitter. To simply opt out feels irresponsible. A day or two away is one thing, but any longer almost feels like burying one’s head in the sand. It’s nice to think we can just delete our apps, check out, and consume the messages from mainstream news sources, but at the same time, we know that’s not how politics work. We know that’s not how perspective is gained. And so we soldier on, checking and re-checking, giving ourselves an hour or two hours or even a few hours before we have to return.
So shout-out to Kendall Jenner for her detox that sparked a thousand news stories thus giving us a reprieve from the onslaught of awful we’ve been privy to since last Tuesday. If you can, channel her for a few hours or for the weekend or until you feel like you’ve been able to reign in your anxiety before delving back in. Or, on the flip side, keep Instagram. And head over there whenever Twitter gets to be too much. Maybe you’ll get more followers than Kendall.
