Want to hide your followers on Instagram? Well, you are not the only one with this wish.

With social media platforms becoming part and parcel of our daily lives, almost everyone on the planet is connected to each other.

Thanks to this level of hyperconnectivity, even people are leaving social media these days!

And when it comes to hyperconnectivity and oversharing, we can’t help but mention Instagram. It is one of the most popular social media platforms on the planet. If you are on Instagram with a public account, the entire world probably knows about your existence.

In such a situation, you are likely to restrict your personal data. Tightening your privacy on Instagram often starts with hiding your list of followers.

But how? Does Instagram allow you to do that? And, why might you want to hide your followers on Instagram?

Why Should You Hide Your Followers on Instagram?

With Instagram being the beacon of oversharing, there are a few potent reasons why you might want to secure your followers’ list and prevent others from snooping into it.

Privacy Issues

Safeguarding your privacy on Instagram could be a top priority for you.

Why? For starters, Meta – Instagram’s parent company has a history of privacy breaches.

The notorious Cambridge Analytica example must always remind you to take your privacy issues seriously whenever you’re on a social media owned by Meta.

Besides, in 2012, shortly after Meta acquired Instagram, it faced severe backlash from the update that implied it could use user’s pictures for profit. Ultimately, this update was revoked.

Instagram Scams

However, beyond Meta’s actions, Instagram has become a breeding ground for scams.

In 2022, due to a teen data mishandling case, Instagram received a 405 million Euro penalty from Ireland’s privacy regulator.

It has also witnessed several phishing scams, extortion demands, and other cybersecurity threats on the platform.

Avoiding Undue Attention

If you’ve built a large following on Instagram, it could act as a double-edged sword.

Although it is a great way to leverage your popularity and monetize your account, you might be drawing attention to specific followers. These could be your close friends, family, or even loved ones.

To restrict unwanted attention, you might want to hide your followers’ list.

Maintain An Appearance

Numbers play a huge role on platforms like Instagram. The number of followers one has is directly associated with the amount of popularity and influence they have.

But there can be times when people buy Instagram followers with PayPal to boost their following and want to keep it discrete.

If they keep their follower lists private, it will be impossible for others to know if those followers are organic or not. So, it can massively help them to keep their social status unharmed.

Professional Reasons

The follower list is a direct gateway to earn more revenue for digital creators, influencers, and even personal brands on Instagram. You might have built that with years of hard work.

Now, a public follower list could make it easy for your competitors to identify your loyal crowd. They can also shark on your target audience data, which could affect your competitive edge.

Thus, hiding your followers on Instagram is a very natural decision.

But can you do so? Let’s find out.

Can You Hide Followers On Instagram?

Unfortunately, there is no direct option available on the platform that can help you hide your followers and following list. But don’t worry, as we have come up with some tricks that can help you do that.

But on the other hand, Instagram has also made some updates that can partially help you in this matter. For example, the platform is testing a new feature where they have stopped showing the entire followers list of other users, no matter if you follow them or not.

However, this feature hasn’t been launched yet, and the platform is picking random verified and unverified profiles to test it. Under this feature, if someone tries to go through your Followers list, they will be presented with a random list of 20 to 30 people who are following you. This also restricts anyone from seeing your latest Instagram followers.

Plus, the search option will also get removed, so no one will be able to search through your follower’s list.

But as we said, this feature is neither out nor available for everyone. If you are lucky, your account might get picked for testing, but it will definitely not be permanent. So, instead, check our next section, where we have discussed practical ways that can help you hide your follower list and are available for all the users.

How To Hide Followers List On Instagram?

Until Instagram makes the above feature permanently available for everyone, you can try out these three methods to hide your followers list on Instagram.

1. Hide Your Followers From Those Who Don’t Follow You

According to Instagram’s privacy policy, if you agree to have a public account, then metrics like Followers and Following will be visible to everyone. So, if you want them to be hidden, the easiest way of doing it will be to make your account private.

That way, anyone who isn’t following you will not be able to see details of your followers list. By enabling a private account, you could easily control who can and cannot see your content, too, just like you can’t view a private Twitter account’s tweets.

So, let’s see how you can make your account go private from public.

Step 1: Go to your profile and click on settings.

Step 2: Click on settings and privacy.

Step 3: Go to account privacy and find the option “Private account.”

Step 4: Turn on the toggle button, and it should show you a pop-up text similar to this. Click on “Switch to private,” and your account will become private.

After turning this setting on, anyone who wasn’t already following you will only be able to see the number of followers you have but won’t get any details of it.

Drawbacks of a Private Account on Instagram

The following are the drawbacks of enabling a Private account on Instagram.

Although a private account successfully hides your list of followers from your non-followers, your existing followers can still find them. So, this option doesn’t grant you complete anonymity.
The manual need to approve every new follower request can become quite time-consuming. It’s especially true if you get several follow requests.
Lastly, a private account is counter-intuitive if you’re using Instagram for business and reach. It limits your reach and discoverability by potential followers.

2. Hide Your Followers From Selected People

The previous method will prevent non-subscribers from viewing your follower list, but what about those who already follow you? How to stop them? Well, you can’t stop everyone, so you need to be selective.

After you make your account private, go through your existing follower list and spot users with whom you don’t want to share your follower list. You can then remove them from your follower list, and they will no longer be able to see your follower list and the content you post.

Don’t worry; they will not get any notification or alert if you remove them from your follower list. So, let’s see how to remove someone from your follower list.

Step 1: Go to your profile and click on your Followers list.

Step 2: Find the user you want to remove from your followers. If you have a long list of followers, we suggest you utilize the available search option to save time.

Step 3: Click on the “Remove” option next to their name. You should see a pop-up message where you need to click on the “Remove” option.

Drawbacks of Removing Your Instagram Followers

There are multiple disadvantages to removing your Instagram followers.

Removing followers manually ultimately decreases your follower count, stunting your account growth and social media presence.
Your followers engage with your content through likes, comments, views, and others. Therefore, removing them implies declining engagement and interaction metrics for your content.
It also creates a negative impression among the rest of your followers. If they somehow get to know about this, you could face online trolls and be a victim of “cancel culture.”

3. Hiding Followers For Public Accounts

If you own a business that you are promoting through Instagram or want to become a social media influencer, then keeping your account private may not be a viable option for you. Then, the only option left would be to block users.

Again, in this case, you need to be selective and decide who the users are whom you want to restrict from viewing your account. Remember, once you block someone, not only will they be unable to see your follower list, but they will also be restricted from messaging you or seeing any of the content you post.

So, let’s see how you can block a user on Instagram.

Step 1: Go to the user’s profile. If they already follow you, you can find them in your follower list, but if they don’t, you can use the general search option to find them.

Step 2: Click on the three dots right next to their username.

Step 3: From there, you can click on Block and again “Block” to restrict the user from seeing you.

Drawbacks of Blocking Users on Instagram

You could face multiple hiccups after blocking users on Instagram.

Blocking an Instagram user without any reason or explanation could cause strained relationships.
Blocking doesn’t guarantee complete invisibility for your profile. If your Instagram account is public, the blocked user can simply log out from that account and log in using a different account that isn’t linked to the first one. Similarly, they can log out of their primary Instagram account and log in to Instagram from a browser using a separate account. They can check out your profile without any hassle.
Blocking users also removes their comments or engagement on your profile. Overall, it hurts your profile dynamics and engagement metrics.

Pros and Cons of Hiding Your Followers on Instagram

As you’ve already seen, hiding your followers on Instagram is also associated with certain pitfalls. Let’s weigh the pros against the cons of this action.

Pros

Hiding your followers’ list on Instagram relieves you from unwanted attention. Now, unknown people won’t be able to snoop in on your followers.
It could give you a competitive advantage if you do it purely professionally.
It ensures greater control over the information you share online.
It could even relieve you from stress. Sometimes, people equate their worth with their social media presence. At such times, their follower count becomes a metric to analyze their life’s worth. By hiding these followers, you can get rid of such pressure.

Cons

Hiding followers can reduce engagement in your content. It’s especially important if your Instagram account was built for that very reason.
Hiding your followers also lands a blow on your discoverability and reach.

Wrapping Up

Hope you found this guide helpful and were able to find a suitable way to keep your follower list private on Instagram. With increasing privacy concerns among users and Instagram’s efforts to improve user experience, we can soon expect a separate feature that will help us hide the details of our follower list. But till then, you can pick any one of the three methods we mentioned here and keep your information safe from stalkers.

How to Hide Followers on Instagram?