Milo Ventimiglia Says This Is Why He Quit Instagram—And Why He May Never Go Back

Milo Ventimiglia is very active on social media, but This Is Us fans may have noticed that the actor inexplicably quit Instagram a while back. In a new interview posted by the Associated Press, Milo Ventimiglia explains why he abruptly quit posting on the photo-sharing social network 219 weeks ago—and why he may never go back.

Ventimiglia said he originally started using Instagram because he had always been into photography and wanted to share his work with his fans.

“Since I was a kid I always had a camera in my hands, for vacations to just family stuff, I was always shooting,” Ventimiglia told the AP.

“And Instagram started as a place for a collective group of photographers and artists to share their work, and their lives. And at a certain point — after doing it for three years — I saw it change. Nobody was looking at the photos. They were asking me about my acting jobs.”

Milo said that when the social media site no longer felt right, he decided to go out on a high note.

“It felt like it lost what I’d grown to love about it as a photographer,” Milo explained. “And I just randomly stopped.”

Ventimiglia’s final post was a nighttime shot of Los Angeles that he snapped after a night out with friends, with the caption “Finito.” Milo said he felt that, as an artist, he had completed his series of photos. “Finito” was his 1,200th post, which Ventimiglia considered to be a nice, even number.

But Ventimiglia says for some reason he now only has 1,199 Instagram posts, which means at some point the Instagram powers-that-be took one of his photos down for violating the terms of the site. Milo said he doesn’t recall ever posting anything offensive, and he has no idea which photo was taken down.

Milo Ventimiglia was active on Instagram for three years and his feed was a showcase for his personal photography work. Architecture was a common theme on Milo’s feed, with the occasional selfie or shot from a TV series set thrown in for good measure.

Ventimiglia’s decision to stop posting on Instagram came well before he piloted the role of Jack Pearson on NBC’s hit drama This Is Us, but many fans are just discovering his page now. Milo has 584,000 Instagram followers, a number that continues to rise as more This Is Us fans find his page.

It’s not surprising that Milo Ventimiglia is an avid photographer. Milo previously told Interview magazine that he grew up in a very creative family.

“My older sister was an artist as she was growing up,” Milo told Interview last year.

“Our middle sister was into photography all the time, and now she’s a photographer. We always had an artistic background growing up; the notion that it was all varied—different sides of the arts—was very reflective of my mom and dad letting us explore what we wanted to explore. When I was a kid it went from being a pediatric surgeon, to being a fighter pilot, to being an actor. There were a million different things I could have chosen or wanted to do, but the path of an artist was the one that pulled me the most.”

While he no longer shares his photography on Instagram, Milo Ventimiglia is still very active on Twitter. Milo interacts with fans on a daily basis and his bio includes a link to his still-active Instagram page. Ventimiglia also posts photos on Twitter, but almost all of his pictures are selfies or shots from the This Is Us set.

Take a look at the video below to see Milo Ventimiglia talking about why he no longer uses Instagram.

Milo Ventimiglia returns to This Is Us this fall on NBC.

[Featured Image by Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images]