The rules of social media are so intricate, self-explanatory, and complex that I think those who have a really strong social media game have a lot of weird factors to consider. Meanwhile, the rest of us are just wondering how to tell if someone has unfollowed you on Instagram. seriously. That's all I want to know. Who among my followers thinks my content is no longer worthy of their attention? Who will be on my list ? (Don’t lie; we all have one.)
Of course, Instagram is kind of notorious for making it hard to tell if someone is still following you—you can't search as easily as you can on other platforms. So for #journalism, I conducted my own experiment to see if I could find a way to tell when someone had unfollowed me. Based on my research, I concluded that there are two ways to do this: manual and technical. The manual way involves tracking people who follow you and manually checking if someone is still following you after a period of time. Technical methods include getting a special app that does all of this work for you. Obviously one of these is easier, but if you're unwilling to let a third-party app access your account, your best bet is to put your own thumb to the test.
I personally don’t stalk my followers on Instagram. I don’t think my feed is interesting enough for people to care, and nothing scares me more than a bunch of strangers expecting me to offer something cool. I don’t work well under the pressure of social media. But if you are an Insta-savvy person, this article is for you.
1. Instructions
The first thing you have to do is find the person you want to check out. I'll use my editor @dilemmalord as an example. When she followed me on Instagram, I noticed.
If you want to check if this person has unfollowed you, just go to their profile first. Then, click the "Follow" button in the upper right corner of the page. This will take you to a list of all the people they are following.
As I scrolled down, I noticed that my name didn't appear in the list. She unfollowed me. It stings! Just kidding, we do this for research. I know she loves my dog photos, cross stitches, and Snapchat cutouts.
2. Technology
This method of finding out who has unfollowed you is easier, but requires you to download a third-party app. One option is Instagram’s “Follower Tracking”! With over 45,000 ratings in the App Store, it looks pretty legit. Once you link your Instagram account to it, the app not only keeps track of who has unfollowed you, but also who has not followed you or recently started following you. You can see how many people have blocked you, but in order to find out who you have to pay a subscription fee based on a certain user's rating. Here is a screenshot of its dashboard from the app store:
Another third-party option is Instagram's FollowMeter, which has similar functionality and ranks your "popularity" on the app. After downloading the app, you'll be asked to log in to the personal Instagram account you want to monitor. Complete this step and you’re done!
In addition to your "most likes," the app also tracks your average likes per post. According to Lifewire, some features may require a subscription fee, similar to Instagram’s Followers Track! . If you're curious about how FollowMeter organizes all this information, a screenshot of its app store page might give you a better idea:
Good luck to anyone who tries to secretly unfollow you after downloading one of these. Finding the culprit is a real pain, but hey, at least you found out the truth.
Before deciding to use these or other apps, it's important to remember that many of them only track what happens after you log into your account through a third-party app. If you want to learn about early unfollows, you should use the first method in this article.
Photo: sod tatong/Moment/Getty Images; Instagram
