Becky

Social Media Purge

This has been a work in progress for the last week or so, but I’ve been doing a social media purge, unfollowing accounts on Twitter and Instagram. (I don’t really follow many pages on Facebook, and since I didn’t have my account in high school, I don’t have a million friends. It’s pretty manageable with the 255 I have so Facebook escapes this…for now.) I’m not really unfollowing people I know in real life but rather business accounts or accounts of athletes/celebrities/TV personalities.

I’ve found along the way I just followed random people and now most of them aren’t relevant to me. Most of the athletes I follow have ended up on other teams, and unless I absolutely love them—like Brock Holt or Travis Shaw—I’m unfollowing them.

I’m also unfollowing TV personalities; my feed seems to be a little too cluttered with political talk and sometimes it stresses me out. I’ll admit that I mostly get my news from Twitter, but I kind of want to weed out who I’m reading information from, if that makes sense. Like sometimes it feels like people are just yelling into the void.

Then there are just random people I’m following that I probably could do without. And don’t forget about the meme accounts.

I’m not doing a big bulk purge, like going through my “Following” list and eliminating people. It’s more like if they post and when I see it in my feed it’s not interesting or they’re one of the people I normally skip over, then I unfollow. This task seems to be a little easier on Instagram than Twitter for some reason.

These are the questions I’m asking myself:

  • Why exactly am I following this person?
  • Did they post something funny once a while ago and that’s why I’m following them?
  • Am I only following them because I feel like I have to follow them?
  • Do I interact with their posts, either like or re-tweet them?
  • Are they relevant to me?
  • Are they just clogging up my feed?
  • Do I just scan over their posts and not even read them?

These questions seem to be helping me figure out who to unfollow. I’ve never really done a bulk unfollow before—I guess I could call it an early spring cleaning—but I’m hoping I can make using social media feel less overwhelming. And I can engage a little bit more and stop the mindless scrolling.

How do you go about unfollowing people? What’s your philosophy for following people—who you don’t know in real life—on social media?

14 comments

  1. If they seem interesting, I follow them. If they tick me off too much, I dump them (Twitter) or snooze them (Facebook). I don’t do much regarding people who just clog up my account, although I probably should.

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  2. I just did a purge myself about a month ago on FB and instagram. My Twitter is only for my blog so it can have whatever. When I unfollow, it’s if I haven’t had any contact in 6 months. It seems to be a good rule lol but this time I just went through and deleted anyone I didn’t talk to. Easy as that. I don’t follow too many celebrities or other pages so it was easy

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    • That sounds like a good rule for unfollowing people you know. My problem is that I follow more celebrities/athletes than actual people so sometimes it feels like my feed is clogged with stuff I don’t care about.

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  3. I need to do this in the near future as well! It can be easy for social media to get cluttered with accounts that no longer appeal to you. My guidelines for following/unfollowing people would probably be similar to yours-I generally just want to follow people who post about things I’m interested in and that I interact with/relate to.

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    • I feel like along the way I just picked up people and now I’m like, why did I follow you again? Haha. And I can only handle so much of people just yelling into the void.

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  4. If people seem interesting, I will follow them. If they are not what I expected them to be, I unfollow. i never do these follow for follow things… I guess I am tough to win over and I have no problem in letting people go. This counts for Twitter and Instagram. My Facebook is a bit like yours – not that many friends (144), and I know them all personally.

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  7. I do regular social media purges. I don’t like the clutter and it really helps my mental health to only follow people I know and like or people who inspire me. I don’t really have rules for unfollowing though… Sometimes our tastes just change and it’s okay!

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