These New Instagram Features Allow Us to Curate Our Feeds Like Never Before

I don’t know about you, but sometimes I scroll down my Instagram feed and feel confused by the content. Did I follow these accounts? Why did I first follow them? How long ago did I follow them and what was it about their content that piqued my interest? Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely live for a diverse feed, but sometimes I feel like my feed doesn’t reflect my interests.

Then why, you might ask, don’t I simply unfollow those accounts?

It’s a good question. But for me, I’ve always felt like unfollowing accounts is a pretty harsh thing to do, especially if they turn out to be someone you know. Plus, I actually quite enjoy seeing content that represents different eras of my social life and interests.

Thankfully (for me and any others with this problem), today, Instagram is launching two new ways to choose how you see your feed, by creating two new viewing tools: Favourites and Following. These new tools will allow us to tailor and personalise content that is the most relevant to us at any given moment, and allow us virtually full control over our feed.

How Does ‘Following’ and ‘Favourites’ on Instagram Work?

Favourites:

You can add any accounts you follow to your Favourites, which will then show up at the top of your newsfeed with a star icon and a separate Favourite feed, curating the latest posts from all the accounts you’ve added to your Favourites. Imagine this: a feed full of the latest content from all your besties and favourite content creators!? Sounds like a dream.

You can add up to 50 favourites and make changes to your list at any time — people will not be notified when they are added or removed (phew).

Following:

The Following tab will filter by accounts you follow — so basically everyone else; people who you follow, but aren’t in your Favourites feed. Both Following and Favourite features will sort by chronological order, to help us quit the dreaded doom scroll and quickly catch up on our latest feed content on the go. This means that we’ll actually get the most recent post at the very top of the feed, which is honestly music to our ears!

Research shows that people are more satisfied with a ranked feed, so Instagram will not be defaulting people into a chronological feed experience. 

Truth be told, we all use our Instagram feeds for different reasons — from discovering new creators in suggested posts, going down content holes, or simply as a tool that helps us stay up to date with our friends and family.

These new Instagram features will just make the whole experience more enjoyable. With a curated feed, comes a platform that is enjoyable and inspiring to use. It allows us to go through different moods with the content we want to consume, and for that to be okay.

For example, if you’re just a bit sick of reading the news because it’s making you feel gloomy, you can remove all news accounts from your Favourites feed and just consume your Favourites for a while. Honestly, in an online world with such a constant flow of content/news/trends/conspiracy theories, having the ability to curate and control our own personal content is a must-have, to preserve mental health and prevent fatigue.