Most people do not check out their newest Instagram followers out of boredom; rather, they are searching for an answer to the question the app leaves open to them. That question could involve any of the following: trust, interest in, attraction to, jealousy or competition towards someone else, or changes in interest. Instagram now allows users to access information about users’ public profiles, the number of users who follow and have followed them for public accounts. However, due to Instagram’s removal of the Old Following Activity Tab, users are no longer able to see their entire recent activity on the site; therefore, users are left with pieces of information instead of a full-length history of their activity as they would have before.
- People Check Recent Follows Because Instagram Leaves an Information Gap
- Ambiguity Keeps Curiosity Active Longer than a Clear Answer Would
- Many Users Are Trying to Decode a Social Question, Not Collect Random Data
- Recent Follows Look Meaningful Because They Seem Less Staged than Other Signals
- The Real Appeal Is not Certainty, but the Feeling of Getting Closer to It
Disclosure: Contributed post.
1. People Check Recent Follows Because Instagram Leaves an Information Gap
That gap matters more than it seems. Curiosity research from George Loewenstein and later work by Russell Golman frames curiosity as a response to an information gap, which means people become more interested when they can see that a missing answer exists but cannot fully reach it yet. Instagram creates exactly that condition when users can view parts of a public profile, counts, and occasional visible activity cues, but still cannot easily see the sequence behind them.
That is one reason an ordered view feels so appealing. Recentfollow presents recent followers or following for public Instagram accounts in newest to oldest order, which gives people something closer to a timeline when the native app feels vague. An ordered list does not erase uncertainty, though it gives users a clearer way to inspect a public signal they already care about.
2. Ambiguity Keeps Curiosity Active Longer than a Clear Answer Would
Instagram offers hints about how users are active. However, the activity status is only shown to people if they follow each other; or if they sent direct messages to each other. Furthermore, both of them have their Activity Status turned on. Therefore, that signal is conditional and incomplete.
When a company provides information in parts such as Instagram, the brain continues to process the missing information rather than allow it to settle.
3. Many Users Are Trying to Decode a Social Question, Not Collect Random Data
Social motives behind our actions can be explained thru the social comparison theory, which states that we rely on others’ situations to assess our own status and behaviors in relation to them. Recent studies have shown a very strong link between social media use and comparison processes. So, recent follower activity can also provide information about what types of people someone finds important, what they might want, what they admire, and how they might be feeling or going in regards to their creative or emotional state.
4. Recent Follows Look Meaningful Because They Seem Less Staged than Other Signals
Often times followers seem more authentic than captions, pinned posts, and public content on your social media account. Also, the content you see on social media can be altered or created to reach your target audience on an intentional schedule. This fact can lead to a very different interpretation of who an individual is outside of social media. Not every single follow will always provide reliable information but individuals may rely on the follows to guide what someone’s intentions are based around the recent number of times that they’ve followed an account.
Many times, creators will use recent followers as a way to identify trends. If a niche account follows multiple accounts within the same category in a relatively short time period, this may suggest that this niche account may be shifting their content soon. Analyzing a follower’s recent follows along with their previous follows allows for the opportunity to compare and contrast more than just the current follow’s individual views but instead with all of the follower’s previous follows over an extended time frame, rather than assuming all alone similar to the current follow’s unique perspective.
5. The Real Appeal Is not Certainty, but the Feeling of Getting Closer to It
When checking back regularly, it may sometimes seem like you’re getting ahead in establishing a pattern of ongoing discovery rather than just finding something new once.
The reason this appears so productive is due to how much weight someone places on seeing multiple instances of behavior or engagement within the same general time frame. Both will often lead them to assume there is an ongoing phenomenon occurring. Therefore, leading the user to place much more significance on their analysis of that behavior and the account.
Comparison with Others
Research into social comparison has repeatedly demonstrated that when we compare ourselves with others in an online environment doing so can affect self-esteem and emotional reactions negatively thru over-analysis. Especially, when there are no clear indicators as to why some form of comparison is valid when evaluating something that was intended for another purpose/product/brand in mind.
People who engage in habitual checking behaviors are typically looking for answers where none exist. As a result, users are more likely to over-analyze their interactions with people versus what they should have been considering about the event itself.
What Is Really behind the Habit?
Instead of considering an individual’s pattern of checking their list of recent followers as some kind of obsessive habit that started spontaneously, view it as a reaction to the design of Instagram’s platform. It is not an irrationally obsessive habit.
By providing only partial histories for activity on the platform and not providing a complete view of who the person has followed or unfollowed, Instagram generates enough ambiguity to allow users to continue trying to understand their relationships with others.
Consequently, individuals will check their list of recently followed people to make sense of their disorganized relationships within their social setting, and will continue trying to make sense of these relationships until they can find a tangible connection between two people based on their most recent actions.
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