If you’re stalking someone on Instagram, this may be an ex that you can leave alone or someone you admire, chances are that you’re going to be on their Instagram profile a lot. Or since you visit their profile so often, you always see their content on your feed. When you’re on someone’s profile stalking them, then accidentally following them is very likely. This can be embarrassing especially if they’re someone you’re not meant to be stalking. To save yourself from the embarrassment, you then follow them quickly in the hopes that they don’t find out. If you’re worried whether they’ll be able to tell that you followed them in the first place, then it depends.
Will Someone Know If I Follow Then Unfollow Them Quickly?
If you accidentally follow and unfollow someone on Instagram, chances are they won’t know you’ve done so. Depending on how quickly you unfollowed, they may not receive a notification on their phone. However, if they’re active on their phone and you took too long to unfollow them, then they are likely to receive a notification and see it. If they’re not using their device during the time you follow then unfollowed them, then the notification will disappear from their device as soon as you unfollow them. Even if they go to their Instagram notifications, they won’t be able to see that you’ve followed them because the notification gets deleted as soon as you unfollow them.
If You Accidentally Follow Someone on Instagram then Block Them
If you accidentally follow someone then block them, they’re not going to see that you followed them since you blocked them. When you block them, all notifications from you will disappear, and so will your profile. However, if you’re wondering if you should block someone after you follow then unfollow them, then don’t. This is pretty unnecessary and it can make you look even worse in most cases. Let me explain a scenario, let’s say that you follow then unfollow someone and they’re on their phone. They’re going to get a notification if you didn’t unfollow fast enough. Let’s say that they see that notification come up on their phone so they open Instagram to see but there’s no notification because you unliked it – this will already look weird and they can probably tell it was an accident. Now let’s say that they saw the notification, went to your Instagram, and saw that you blocked them – this is going to make you look even worse. The best thing to do after the following someone accidentally is to unfollow them right away.
What Happens If You Accidently FollowedSomeone On Instagram?
When you’re on someone’s profile stalking them, or you see their posts on your explore page, then accidentally following them is inevitable – that’s if you’re an avid Instagram user. This can be embarrassing especially if they’re someone you know. To save yourself from the embarrassment, you unfollow them in the hopes that they don’t find out. If you’re worried about whether they’ll be able to tell you followed them, then it depends. If you follow and unfollow someone on Instagram, chances are they won’t know you’ve done so. Depending on how quickly you unfollowed, they may not receive a notification on their phone. However, if they’re active on their phone and you took too long to unfollow, then they are likely to receive a notification and see it. If you’re using Instagram on your PC, then it’s going to be harder to unfollow someone that you’ve just followed because you’ll have to click down on your mouse and the screen is too large for accidents like that to happen.
1. Were They Using Their Phone
If they’re not using their device during the time you follow and unfollowed them, then the notification from their device will disappear as soon as you follow them. Even if they go to their Instagram notifications, they won’t be able to see that you’ve followed them because the notification gets deleted as soon as you unfollow them. There’s no way to tell if someone was using their phone when you followed then unfollowed them which is why it’s hard to use this as reassurance for them not finding out. You can use other apps like WhatsApp and Facebook to see if they’re active now and are currently using their phones. This will let you know if they were using their phones when you accidentally followed them.
2. If You Unfollow Them, Does The Notification Go Away
In their notification bar, the notification disappears once you unfollow their account. It used to be that when you accidentally followed someone then unfollowed, the notification stayed on their phone but disappeared on the app, but recently the notification on their phone and on Instagram disappears when you unfollow the account. If there is a glitch in their notifications section, this can cause the notification to stay there longer than usual which will allow them to see that you initially followed them. Another thing that can affect this is whether they have their notifications disabled for Instagram or not. If they have their notifications disabled, then when you unfollow them, even if they’re on their phone, they’re not going to see if you follow them because their notifications are disabled. They are able to turn off their notifications via the settings app and the Instagram app itself. The downside of this is that you won’t know if they did this so you can’t really use it as reassurance for them not finding out that you followed them.
3. Your Follow Might Be Clumped In With The Rest
If you accidentally followed them, chances are their post was trending on the explore page which means that a bunch of other people are following them and liking their posts. There’s a chance that your username is clumped in with a bunch of other people who followed them. Because of this, they won’t actually see that you followed them unless they check each follow individually. With Instagram, if someone’s post is trending, the people following them mainly comprise of people they don’t know which means they’re less likely to care about who’s follow them to check. If this is the case, then they probably haven’t seen that you’ve followed them.
4. If You Do It Fast Enough, The Follow Won’t Be Registered
When you unfollow them, it may have been done so fast that the following wasn’t registered in the first place. It usually takes seconds for Instagram to register that someone’s been followed and then send a notification to the person to let them know. If you unfollow quickly enough, enough time wouldn’t have passed for Instagram to process the follow and send the user a notification. If you’re in a position where you only found out that you unfollowed them a long time after you followed them, then this certainly won’t be the situation for you.
5. Are They A Famous Creator?
If they’re a famous creator, then the less you have to worry about. Famous creators get tons of notifications so the last thing that you should be worried about is them knowing that you followed them. They don’t even have to be famous, if they put out lots of content regularly and they get quite a bit of engagement, they’re constantly receiving notifications and in the event that you accidentally followed them, chances of them knowing is pretty much impossible.
What to Do After Accidentally Following Someone On Instagram
Knowing what to do after accidentally following someone on Instagram is crucial because this can make or break whether they get that notification or if they know that you followed then unfollowed them. Tip: If you are on someone’s profile, looking through their profile or their pictures, then you can put your phone or airplane mode to cover your tracks. Before you do this, make sure to load up all of your content using Wi-Fi or data. Once it’s loaded, put your phone in airplane mode. If you accidentally follow them or like something accidentally, it won’t be registered before your phone wasn’t connected to the internet. If you do accidentally follow someone, take your phone off airplane mode and refresh their profile – you’ll see that the follow wasn’t registered.
Disable Your Account?
Again, disabling your account after accidentally following someone is unnecessary. Once you follow and unfollow fast enough, they’re not going to see a notification. Whether they saw that you followed them or they didn’t, disabling your account is just an extra step that doesn’t need to be taken. To deactivate your account:
Nothing
Since the follow won’t show up when you accidentally follow someone, you don’t have to do anything to stop them from seeing that you followed them. The only occasion that you should be worried about them seeing it is if you took a long time to unfollow them. If you unfollow straight away, you don’t have to worry about the notification. But if you took a long time, then it means that they’ve already seen the follow and there’s no point in you doing anything. Even doing things like blocking them is useless because they’ll know that you only did it because you were embarrassed about them knowing that you followed them.
Delete Your Profile Picture and Change Your Name
As soon as you accidentally follow someone, you can change your profile picture and username to something anonymous so that they don’t suspect that it was you who followed them. This means that you’ll be able to lurk through Instagram without the chance that someone you know will find out that you were stalking them.
How to Stop Accidentally Following People on Instagram?
Rather than someone being notified that you followed then unfollowed them, you can prevent this from happening in the first place. There are a few ways that you can use Instagram which will prevent you from making such a mistake.
Don’t Scroll Near The Follow Button
One way that you can follow someone accidentally is by clicking the follow button while scrolling through the explore page. To stop yourself from following them by accident, when scrolling, you need to stay away from the follow button. The middle or left lane of the post is the best way to scroll although it might feel more natural to use the right lane. If you want to share the video or view their profile, then you need to be extra careful to make sure that you don’t click the follow button.
Airplane Mode
Another way to scroll through your explore page or visit people’s profiles without accidentally following them is by putting your phone on Airplane mode. When your phone is on airplane mode, your device won’t be connected to the internet, so Instagram won’t be able to register that you’ve followed someone. For this to work, you need to make sure that you’ve loaded all of the posts on your feed before you put your device in Airplane mode. Once the profile you want to view has loaded up, then you need to put your phone on airplane mode, and look through their posts. All putting your phone on Airplane mode does is stop the follow from processing in the case that you do accidentally follow someone. After looking at their posts without them knowing, you can now turn your phone off airplane mode and the person won’t be able to tell that you followed them if you did it by accident.
Use Another Account
If you have a burner account that has no traces to your identity, you can use this to stalk people on Instagram and they’ll never be able to tell it was you that accidentally followed them. If their account is public, then using your burner account is easy and you’ll be able to view their posts anytime. But if their account is private, then you’ll have to follow them and be accepted in order to view their posts anonymously. The key to this is that there can be absolutely nothing that links your personal account and this burner account unless they suspect you’re the person behind the account. Another thing to realize here is that if they don’t have that many followers and notice an unknown burner account is watching their stories without following them, this can lead them to block since they know someone is stalking them.
Use Instagram On Your Laptop
Using Instagram on your laptop will make the chances of you following someone accidentally a lot smaller. Because you’re not using your fingers, you’re not going to be accidentally clicking the follow button. Of course, using Instagram on your laptop won’t provide you with the best user experience but it’ll alleviate your fears.
