Why You Should Make Unfollowing People a Regular Habit
Hiding people from your feeds improves the entire experience exponentially. Not deleting. Not blocking. Unfollowing people. Just know you can be at peace with this decision since it’s reversible and the poor soul on the other end will never know it even happened. Like you needed more reasons to filter your social media feeds but here I am typing away…
This isn’t a new practice for me at all but I recently brought the habit to LinkedIn after being bombarded by notifications of my connections’ new articles. What’s with that anyway? You’re by default subscribed to get notifications of new posts – it’s just as scummy as being added to Facebook groups without consent and being forced to get notifications. Sure, you can toggle them off, but it’s the principle.
The basic premise of unfollowing people can and should be applied with just 2 principles:
- Unfollow without hesitation.
- Unfollow without remorse.
I will never try to justify myself to people who oppose this on principle, but let’s face it: We have way more people on our friends list than we interact with and the vast majority of posts have no place in our personal or professional life.
People who just don’t get it.
You know what I’m talking about – obnoxious behaviour that really has no explanation. Poor use of automation. Hashtags on websites where hashtags don’t work (like LinkedIn). Constant blog spam.
Let’s bring it back to a simpler time. Remember when Facebook was new (or you were new to it) and you only had your closest friends added? I guarantee you saw more posts you actually cared about. Take some steps towards achieving this.
People who don’t bring you any value.
Pointless. Okay, maybe that was harsh. Just a bit. Not that that matters whatsoever; you’re about to be the unrelentingly warrior of the social feed taking down chumps with the click of a button.
This is completely subjective, so it’s best to just go by your gut. If someone is generally negative all the time, I’ll unfollow them. If all they post is event promotions, I’ll unfollow them. Clickbait articles? Unfollowed.
Brands that haven’t completely sold you.
Or just the brands that you aren’t sold on anymore. These are the businesses you liked that one time as part of a contest, news sites with articles you don’t read (or even click on anymore), your friends’ (failing) startups, etc. Anything and anyone that looks like it shouldn’t belong in your leisure time…shouldn’t.
Unfollowing people isn’t time consuming.
Just make it a habit of yours to unfollow someone when you don’t click with their content right when you see it. At first, it’ll be a pain since you’ll catch yourself doing it all the time, but eventually, it’ll be a much rarer event. You’ll have a more enjoyable experience on social networks when that happens. I can guarantee it.