The Product that trapped us in an infinite scroll

A Reflection on Instagram and Time

---

Disclaimer - I’m an active Instagram user. I spend about 20 minutes daily scrolling, liking, and occasionally posting. But on a recent trip to Udaipur, I came face-to-face with a reality that left me unsettled.

The hotel I stayed at had gone viral on Instagram a few months back, attracting travelers from all corners of the country and outside too. Its restaurant, open to the general public, had become something of a hotspot. Over the course of four nights, I observed a pattern that became impossible to ignore.

The hotel had a lake-facing restaurant open to people not staying in the property too. Every group coming in for a meal spent an average of two hours on the property. Of that time, more than half was spent making reels. Not eating, not talking, not soaking in the beautiful surroundings—just creating content.

It was surreal. People weren’t visiting to experience the place—they were there to capture it. The food was a backdrop. The company, secondary. Their focus was on curating a moment for their followers rather than enjoying one for themselves.

It made me pause and reflect, and write this up.

This post is a little different from what I usually write. But today, I want to step back and examine a product not as a professional, but as a person. A user. A parent.

Instagram is a fascinating product. It’s beautifully designed, endlessly engaging, and undeniably successful. But when we zoom out, when we look at the human experience, I think there’s a conversation worth having about the role it plays in our lives—and the cost it imposes on our most valuable resource: time.

Instagram is product designed to connect us, inspire us, and empower us to share our lives. But beneath its glossy veneer lies a sobering truth: it’s quietly siphoning away something irreplaceable—our time.

When you’re scrolling through reels or stories, you don’t notice it. It’s just a few minutes, maybe a quick dopamine hit. But zoom out.Multiply that “just a few minutes” by millions of people around the world. Every hour, Instagram users collectively spend billions of minutes scrolling through a feed designed to keep them hooked. In a single day, we’re talking about trillions of minutes—a staggering amount of human potential consumed, second by second, for something that won’t leave a lasting impact. That’s such a great cumulative loss of productive time! The magnitude is insane

Think about it. In ten years, you won’t remember the perfectly framed sunset you saw on someone’s profile. You won’t recall the quirky reel someone spent hours editing to sync perfectly with trending audio. These moments won’t matter, not because they were inherently bad, but because they were impermanent. They weren’t built to last.

What’s worse, many of these moments don’t even evoke genuine emotion. They might make you laugh briefly or give you a fleeting sense of envy or awe.

Contrast that with the things that do stick with you—the confidence you felt post something you mastered, the time your best friend made you laugh so hard you cried, the feeling of awe as you watched a real sunset with your own eyes, or the quiet comfort of a shared meal with someone you love. These moments don’t just make you feel something in the moment; they become part of you. They shape how you see the world, how you remember your life.

The sad truth is that Instagram replaces these real, enduring experiences with transient, curated glimpses of other people’s lives. It robs us of our presence, swapping authentic connection for shallow consumption. And in doing so, it wastes the one thing we can never get back—our time.

This is the hidden cost of Instagram. It’s not the minutes spent scrolling; it’s the moments we miss while we’re busy doing it. Moments that could have been spent laughing, creating, learning, or simply living. Moments we’ll never get to relive.

So the question we must ask ourselves is this: Are we spending our time on things that truly matter? Or are we letting it slip away, one scroll at a time?

This isn’t a critique of Instagram’s design or its team’s intent. It’s a critique of a system—a system that incentivizes engagement at all costs and measures success in minutes spent rather than value delivered.

Time is our most precious resource. It’s finite, non-renewable, and utterly priceless. Yet, products like Instagram have found a way to monetize it, one scroll at a time.

Think about it: how often do you hear someone say, “I’ll just check Instagram for a minute,” only to lose an hour? This isn’t accidental. It’s the result of carefully crafted product decisions—endless feeds, autoplay videos, and those addictive little red notification dots.

These aren’t just features. They’re mechanisms. Mechanisms designed to keep you engaged, regardless of whether that engagement is meaningful.

But here’s the thing: meaningful engagement can’t be measured in minutes. It’s measured in impact. Did this product help me grow? Did it strengthen my relationships? Did it leave me better than it found me?

For many, the answer is no. Instead, it leaves us drained, distracted, and disconnected from the people and experiences that truly matter.

And that brings me to a very controversial thought - Not every product needed to be made, and maybe Instagram was one of them.

That’s a bold claim, I know. But hear me out. At its core, Instagram isn’t solving a real human problem. It’s exploiting one: our need for validation, our fear of missing out, and our desire for connection in an increasingly disconnected world.

Instead of fulfilling those needs, it amplifies them. It creates a world where self-worth is measured in likes, where memories are curated for an audience rather than cherished for their own sake, and where time is spent performing rather than living.

There’s a beautiful concept in a book I recently read, and highly recommend too Same as Ever by Morgan Housel: there are two types of information: permanent and expiring. Permanent information, found in books or deep reflections, compounds over time. It teaches us not just what happened, but why it happened—offering insights that remain relevant for years or even decades.

Expiring information, on the other hand, is fleeting. It tells us what happened now but holds little long-term value. Instagram is a masterclass in expiring information. It keeps our short attention spans occupied and hooks us with the urgency to consume before the content loses relevance.

But what do we gain from this endless chase? In 10 years, will you remember the reel you laughed at on a random Tuesday? Probably not. But you might remember a quiet conversation with a loved one, a book that shifted your perspective, or an idea that stayed with you long after you encountered it.

By filling our days with expiring information, we crowd out the space for reflection, growth, and connection—the things that truly matter.

As product leaders, we have a choice. We can design products that extract value from people, or we can design products that add value to their lives.

The latter is harder. It requires us to resist the allure of engagement metrics and focus instead on outcomes that are harder to measure but infinitely more meaningful.

Some principles to guide us product people, therefore

1. Time is Sacred.
   Every feature, interaction, or decision should respect the user’s time. Instead of asking, “How can we make people spend more time on this product?” ask, “How can we help them achieve their goals and get back to their lives?”

2. Design for Impact, Not Engagement.
   Engagement is a vanity metric. The true impact is about enabling growth, fostering connection, or solving real problems. Measure what matters.

3. Optimize for Long-Term Value.
   Products should leave people better than they found them. That means thinking beyond the immediate interaction and considering the long-term effects on users’ well-being, relationships, and potential.