Good news: Celebrity Instagram obsession is not your fault.

I think I’ve replaced daydreaming with celebrity scrolling. Looking through Blake Lively’s Instagram feed, time – whoosh – disappears. There’s photographs of Lively and her husband and her friends and witty captions about wanting to turn into chocolate.

45 minutes gone. Just like that.

Gettin’ ink . Whoever said temporary tattoos aren’t painful ….was actually quite right

A photo posted by Blake Lively (@blakelively) on Jul 21, 2016 at 6:42pm PDT

I’m not the only one who goes to this special celebrity Neverland. There’s plenty of us who people watch like this. Maybe comparing ourselves. Maybe learning. Maybe laughing or feeling connected or perhaps simply observing. Like an anthropological experiment.

Celebrities have become as important to deep dive into as people I actually know. These images are not like magazine covers or paparazzi shots. They are more “private” more “personal”. This celebrity is sharing with you. 

@_o_ya_ We fell in love at your restaurant in Boston. We stay in love at your restaurant in NY. Thank you for the BEST food and memories! You are our FAVORITE!! Another happy birthday with @vancityreynolds . Hey, Reynolds, I like you a wh❤️le lot. Just sayin’…????

A photo posted by Blake Lively (@blakelively) on Oct 25, 2016 at 3:05pm PDT

There’s an intimacy. An intimacy I know is not real. But still? Still, I’m scrolling.

Why?

Well, now there is a comforting answer. Apparently it has to do with evolution. Yes, the words evolution and Instagram have been used in the same sentence.

Jamie Tehrani is a social anthropologist at Durham University in England. She told The Telegraph that humans have adapted to copy the traits and habits of successful people. We people-watch ‘successful’ people in order to learn how to better improve ourselves.

“Fame is a powerful cultural magnet,” Tehrani said. “As a hyper-social species, we acquire the bulk of our knowledge, ideas and skills by copying others, rather than through individual trial and error.”

So are we turning into a species of no originality? If I see Gigi Hadid wearing a particular bikini, or eating blueberries and avocado for breakfast, I’m more likely to do the same. Not because it works for me but because she’s successful and has a killer bikini body and copying her breakfast habits is going to work for me too, right?

Maybe not, but it’s a tendency that’s worked for humans for centuries, and this evolution angle certainly takes the guilt out of our Insta-obsessiveness.

I won’t feel so bad now, spending 45 minutes admiring Blake Lively’s life. I’m hardwired to do it, and it’s all in the name of self-improvement, after all.