The Instagram Reset Is Not Enough

This week, the Washington Post reported that Instagram released a “reset” button that allows you to clear the data that informs your feed, joining TikTok which has a reset for your “for you” page. If you don’t like what you see there, they say this reset button gives you the opportunity to curate a new view. This is another show of “caring” from Instagram along with their recent Teen Accounts, but there are a few reasons why these efforts will not make any difference in you or your child’s scrolling. 

1. Hitting reset doesn’t stop these platforms from recommending content. You’ll still see a bunch of random junk in your feed when you may wish you could just see content from the accounts you follow. 

2. Although the reset may temporarily remove content that gave you the “ick,” these scroll-trap apps are still designed to steal your attention away from everything else. The infinite scroll itself is harmful to your cognitive functioning even if you’re just scrolling through cat videos. 

3. You may find yourself driven to “train the algorithm” after you reset, but that endeavor will be a time-suck you didn’t anticipate. When that goes off the rails – as it will eventually – and you want to reset again, you’re stuck in an endless loop of resetting and retraining. The algorithm always wins, and your brain always is the loser.

The goal is to have complete control over how you wield the spotlight of your attention so that you are able to live the life you choose, not a life that is suggested and served up to you through algorithms. 

LOOK uses the best of behavior change science to give you the escape hatch from smartphone addiction.