The lost art of cleaning out your feed
Social media is only fun if you like the posts you're seeing. What kind of posts you see depends on which social media site you're using, but generally there are two categories of timelines: the reverse chronological, which you can directly control, and the algorithmic, which you can only sort of steer. In both cases, though, there are things you can do to see more of the things you like and less of the things you don't like.
With that in mind let's rediscover the lost art of tidying out your feeds. Here's a few routines I try to stick to when I notice a lot of gunk—hopefully they're helpful for you.
The British anthropologist Robin Dunbar suggested in a widely cited paper that there's a cognitive limit to the number of people with whom a person can maintain a relationship, proposing that the number is around 150. The theory, which he arrived at by observing primates and scaled based on the relative size of human brains, is that we can't really handle more relationships than that. While the exact number is debated the general concept that there is a limit is referred to as Dunbar's Number. You might remember failed social network Path was based on this concept.
Basically you, as a single person, can't keep up with everyone. Your brain literally can't handle it. Following hundreds of people on social media means setting yourself up for feeling behind—you can't possibly keep up with all of those people.
This is why I try to routinely do what I call The Great Unfollowing. I'm a fairly generous follower. If I read an article I like I'll try to find a newsletter link or RSS feed so I can keep up with the author. The same goes on social media: I try to follow people whose work I want to see more of. Over time, though, I become overwhelmed with the sheer volume. This can be a particular problem on social networks like Mastodon or Bluesky's 'following' tab, which have a reverse chronological timeline. It's also true of my RSS reader. That's because these services use a reverse chronological timeline.
Put simply: These show you every post by the people or publications you're following ordered from most recent and scrolling down from there. The idea is that you can keep up with every post stop when you get to something that you've noticed before. The simplicity is the appeal here but it has some downsides. For example: If someone you follow posts a lot they are going to be overrepresented in your timeline.
This is where The Great Unfollowing comes in. Basically I, on a routine basis, will open the following list, look at each one, and decide whether I want to keep following them. Back when Twitter was a thing I did this every time I noticed I was following more than 150 people—more than that, I'd noticed, and keeping up shifted from fun into an overwhelming firehouse. In order to keep up with the accounts I value most I need to occasionally unfollow the accounts that, to paraphrase a book you've heard of, aren't sparking joy.
Another option is organizing your followers into groups or creating different accounts for different interests (for example: an Instagram account for following people you know in real life and one for sports or celebrities or food, whatever your interests).
Now, I only heard about Dunbar's number after I started doing this. And I don't mean to suggest that there is scientific evidence that you should only ever follow 150 people, or any precise number. For one thing, following someone on social media isn't the same as having a relationship with them, a point that needs to be stated clearly. Most of my close relationships happen entirely outside of social media and I hope the same is true for you.
All I mean to suggest is that there's probably a limit to the number of people, publications, and meme accounts that you can keep up with. Rather than feeling overwhelmed you should take the time to cut things back from time to time. The alternative is getting burnt out on your feeds and not following anyone anymore.
The above section was all about pruning back reverse chronological feeds, where you see all of the posts from all of the people you follow. Many modern social media services, however, barely take which accounts you follow into account. TikTok, famously, uses an algorithm to feed you videos you might be interested in based on your past behavior.
The YouTube homepage works the same way: it's based more on which videos you spend time watching than on which channels you've subscribed to. In both cases hitting the subscribe button may increase the odds of seeing videos from someone but it's not a sure thing. Threads works the same way. Instagram and Facebook, meanwhile, show you a few recent posts from your friends before turning into an algorithmic feed.
In all of these cases you can't quite take the same approach as you can with reverse chronological feeds—unfollowing someone may not have any impact on whether or not you see those posts in your feed. But there are things you can do to help direct the kinds of content that shows up. The first: don't click videos you don't want to see, or if you do leave as quickly as possible. If you want to take more direct action most apps provide tools for that. On YouTube, for example, you can click the three dots next to a video titled and click the 'Not interested' button.
There are similar buttons on Instagram, Facebook, and Threads. Now, how effective these buttons are are the subject of some debate—sometimes it doesn't seem to make any difference. If you truly despise a particular creator and don't want to see their stuff at all, well, there's always the mute or block button. The point is to think actively about what you're seeing in your timeline and attempt to take active steps to align it with what you want to see.
Sometimes nothing seems to work, though, which is when it might be best to start over entirely. The simplest way to do this is to make a new account but you don't necessarily have to. We've written about how to reset the YouTube algorithm and reset the Instagram algorithm, so you can try those guides first. There's also a handy Mozilla guide if you want to reset the TikTok algorithm. Just keep in mind that, after you reset, your choices will shape the algorithm you get next.
Some reading this might think this is all a bit extreme, and I will grant you that it doesn't exactly sound relaxing. But there is arguably nothing more important than what you pay attention to. The things you read and watch will shape the person you become in a very real way. It is worth thinking critically about that and, if possible, trying to direct it. I hope the above tips help you, in some small way, to do that.
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