If you’re the type that cares for their privacy, you certainly want to hide some information on your social media profiles.
A lot of experts though have mentioned that privacy in this digital age is really hard to achieve, some even claiming it doesn’t exist.
The best way to maintain privacy is to give up using social media networks and any online channel that can reveal your personal and private information.
Whatever the case might be, hiding your Instagram followers and following is one of the ways you can maintain some privacy on the network, you’re protecting yourself and your account in numerous forms.
In this post, we’re going to talk about hiding following and followers on Instagram, and also other activities you can do to ensure that privacy is maintained on Instagram.
We’ll start with the benefits of hiding your followers and following, and then share to hide these numbers from other members.
Why You Should Hide Followers And Following On Instagram
Privacy
You might think that only hiding your activities is the way to maintain privacy on Instagram, even hiding followers and following is another step towards privacy protection on Instagram.
Revealing the profiles you follow and the ones that are following you can reveal a lot about you.
It will show your connections and what you’re up to, but if you hide these numbers, unknown people or even close associates have no idea the type of people you’re connecting with on Instagram.
And it will be difficult for them to make predictions on your choices and behaviors.
Prevent your competition from stealing your followers
One of the biggest trends on Instagram these days is that businesses target the profiles of their competitors by viewing the list of all the followers engaging with them.
they’ll start building connections with these followers by providing more value than their competitors.
They’ll follow these profiles, and we all know that a lot of them will follow back when they realize you’re offering something they’re looking for.
Before you know it, your competitor can steal some of your followers that will end up becoming their customers and might even abandon you. By hiding your followers and following on Instagram, you’re protecting your prospects.
Get More attention to your content
Social Network users have the habit of following accounts that seem to have a massive following. They’ll assume that these profiles tend to provide better value than others.
I’ll tell you that as a new account holder or someone with a few followers, a lot of users won’t bother to look at your content even if it’s valuable when they realize you have a few followers.
If you however, hide those numbers, they can’t see the number of followers and following you have, they’ll give more attention to your content and you’ll attract more followers especially if you’re posting high-quality content.
Protect your account
As mentioned above, a lot of businesses want to compete with you, once they realize that you have more following than them, they want to make sure that you’re not ahead of them and they can go to the extent of harming your Instagram account.
They can hire a professional hacker to cause damage to your brand thereby accessing your account and doing some actions that will affect your business image.
If your competitors have no idea about the accounts you’re following and those that are following you, they can’t really understand the strength of your business right in the first place.
Control yourself from others
You’re definitely controlling your visibility when you hide your followers and following on Instagram.
There are different ways to ensure that your followers and following aren’t visible on Instagram and some of them will hide your visibility to a lot of users especially the ones that are not following your profile.
If you’re able to control your visibility, it means you have added an extra layer of privacy to your profile on Instagram.
It’s not everyone you want to view your profile and activities on Instagram especially if you’re running a personal account.
Even businesses should restrict their business from certain users on this giant platform because a lot of damages can be done to them which can cost them a lot of money.
These are some of the reasons why you want to consider hiding Instagram followers and followers, if that’s what you want to achieve, you can go ahead and hide your followers and following.
We’ll now walk you through how to hide your following and followers on Instagram with ease.
How To Hide Followers And Following On Instagram
Is There A Setting On Instagram For Hiding Followers And Following On Instagram
This is a question a lot of people are asking on Instagram and it’s best to address it before we move on to sharing how you can hide followers and following on IG.
The unfortunate answer is NO, there is no option or setting on Instagram which is specifically designed for hiding followers and following on Instagram.
This however still doesn’t mean you can’t hide followers and following from the public view, there are still some workarounds that can be done to ensure that you hide these numbers from the public.
The steps you’ll take aren’t directly designed to hide your Instagram followers and following, but will still help you control your profile visibility.
Since there are no settings on Instagram that give users the option to hide followers and following, no tool or service out there can do this.
Provided you are running a public profile on Instagram, you’ll definitely expose your followers and following.
With that said, let’s now take a look at some of the things you need to do if you want to hide your following and followers on Instagram.
Switch your Profile to Private Mode
This is the first step you need to take if you want to hide followers and following from the public view on Instagram.
Not only hiding followers, you can as well hide almost all your activities to any account that’s not in your follower list.
Going private mode means only your followers can view your Interactions on Instagram, but you’ll have to approve each and everyone of the following requests sent to your profile.
This means that you’ll be able to hide followers and following from public view but still, your followers will be able to see them.
You can see that you have some privacy because anyone that’s not in your followers can’t view your activities. You’ll not be able to hide your followers and following from the profiles you have approved to follow you.
If there are still some of your followers that you don’t want to view your followers and following accounts, you can still take another extra step which we’re about to share in the next methods.
Here is how to switch your account from a personal account to a private Instagram account;
- Open the Instagram app and login as usual, then you move on to tap the picture avatar that will take you to your profile page.
- You now tap on the 3-dot lines from the upper right of the screen.
- Select “Settings” from the options menu and then you tap on “Account”.
- From the options, you then choose “Switch To Private Account”.
- Your Instagram is now private and if you want to change the option you should go back to this setting and you’ll see “Switch To Personal Account”.
- You should note that this option isn’t going to hide your followers and following for all your accounts, this is only restricted for public view. Your followers on the private profile can still view the information regarding your follow list and numbers, plus other interactions, your followers can still view such data.
Remove Instagram accounts
After switching to private mode and there are some users in your followers list that you want to hide your interactions, you remove these users from your account.
This way they will not be able to view anything on your profile since you have now removed them from your follower’s list, they are now the same with strangers just like any other user you haven’t approved right in the first place.
Here are the steps to remove any user you don’t want to be seeing your followers and following on Instagram;
- Click on your profile picture avatar that will take you to the profile page of your account.
- You’ll see the option “Followers” at the top, when you tap on it you’ll be able to see the list of all your followers.
- By the side of every follower, you’ll see the option “Remove”, tapping on this option will remove them from your follower list.
- You have now taken care of them because they can no longer view your followers nor other interactions on your profile.
Block a user
If it seems not proper to remove a user from your following list, you might consider the option of blocking the user.
They will not be notified that you have blocked them, but on the other hand, you should understand that you cannot also view their profile info and other interactions as well.
Blocking a user is a reciprocal action, you’ll be automatically blocked from seeing their activities.
Blocking a user is even more strict than setting your account to private mode, when you block the user, they won’t be able to send you a follow request.
As a matter of fact, if they search for your username, they will not find it nor send a follow request. But in the case of private mode, you can always send a follow request if the user has blocked you.
You need to think carefully before blocking any user because it’s the worst you can do for any profile.
There is no way they can reach you, at least not by using the account you have blocked. Here is how you can block any user on Instagram;
- You should tap on the username you wish to block, you should search for it or you find them on some of the posts they’ve commented or liked.
- You’ll be on their profile page when you click the username and you need to tap on the three-dot lines from the top right corner of the screen.
- You’ll then see the option “Block/Unblock” on your Instagram app, and on PC you’ll see the option “Block/Unblock this user”.
- Tapping on this option will block the user profile you are currently viewing.
- You’ll be prompted to confirm your actions and you need to accept in order to proceed.
- If you still want to unblock them, you should follow the same steps by visiting their profile page.
These are the three steps you need to take if you want to hide your followers and following list on Instagram. These same methods apply to both follower list and following list on Instagram.
Let’s now talk about some of the common questions and answers asked when it comes to hiding followers and following lists on Instagram.
Can I hide profiles I am following
This is a big no, as already stated, there is no direct option, you’ll have to follow some of the methods shared above if you want to hide the profiles you’re following on Instagram.
Can I hide followers list to profiles that are not following me?
If your account is set to private mode, they won’t be able to see your followers, and also other interactions displayed on your profile.
But if your account is set public, they will be able to view it even if they’re not your followers unless you have blocked them.
Can I hide Activity Status?
You can hide activity status on Instagram, hiding this option means that Instagram users won’t be able to view the last time you were on Instagram, it’s called the “Last activity status” feature and can be disabled from your account settings.
If I hide my followers, can I still view the follower list of other Accounts?
If your account is set private, you can still view the follower list of public accounts, but if you blocked the user, you can’t view their follower list as well.