I have used Instacart a few times and love it. They've built a great product and I expect to see their business and others like it grow exponentially in the coming years. With that said I have decided not to use their product (at least for the time being).
I stopped using Instacart because it wasn't solving a real problem in my life. I convinced myself that I had too much on my plate to bother going to the grocery store, but in the process realized that I was actually missing out on much more. To be clear, my argument is not that Instacart and other on-demand services cannot be hugely beneficial. My mother raised five sons and I am sure she would have happily paid a premium to have groceries delivered as she tried to balance everything running a family demands. (As a side not I really don't know how mom's do what they do. As I've gotten older I have started to appreciate what mom's everywhere sacrifice for their children, they are literally superheroes). Some other obvious scenarios include persons who are snowed in or sick, elderly people who can't drive, or someone living with a disability. The list could obviously go on, but it would not include me.
Much of Instacart's initial traction came from/continues to come from catering to tech workers in San Francisco, New York and the like. I am going to generalize here by saying that the demographics of these workers are males and females, under the age of 32 and single (or at least not married with kids). I fall into this bucket. Somehow we have all convinced ourselves that our lives/responsibilities are too great to find time to go to the grocery store. I told myself that ultimately Instacart would allow me to spend more time working. That's bullshit. Again, I am in my mid-twenties, no wife, no children and no real responsibilities outside of the office. Not only do I have time, but I think it's important that we all find time to get out there. Does anybody love waiting in line at the grocery store? No. But when we begin to cut those experiences out of our life what are we left with? What is life without real human interaction? Better yet where will real human interaction com from if all we do is shuffle between the office and our apartment? Talk about living in a bubble.
How can we form comprehensive views of society if we don't actually experience it firsthand? We can't work at the intersection of the humanities and technology if we don't experience the world around us. Perhaps an even more troubling consequence of the "shut-in economy" is it effects on our ability to build great new companies. By removing ourselves from the world we become less sensitive to the problems around us and the problems that need to be solved! And if we don't experience those problems how can entrepreneurs build great new companies to solve them? You'd just end up with a bunch of really smart/driven people optimizing processes they and everyone else in their bubble are dealing with.
In general I think I have done a poor job of evaluating the tradeoffs of using these new services. Someone to do your shopping, deliver your food, do you laundry, etc. The gains in convenience are obviously immense, but you also run the risk of losing touch with reality. In conclusion, I want to post a link to this scene in Goodwill Hunting, which has been on my mind the whole time I was trying to formulate this thesis.