As much as being exposed to social media is a typical scenario in today’s generation, there are still cases when users prefer not to show everything about their engagements and interactions to the rest of the online public.
For instance, a certain post in Instagram is plain likeable and engagement magnet in nature, yet the user would not want his or her followers to see who and who didn’t like such a post.
The news feed is set to show no interaction at all.
Either the user hide likes on Instagram or such an activity is basically turned off.
Instagram may have a setting such as hiding likes count, but when you learn how the workaround of it just so that no one can see how many likes your specific post has earned, nobody will be as genius as you do. It’s not a complicated task to do.
There are just a few tweaks that you need to work on and you will be good to go.
Now, whatever your goal for setting your social media to such an “unlikable” setup, you’re the boss. It’s your account, and unless you use an Instagram growth service, you, alone, are the boss of it.
Two Ways to Hide Likes on Instagram
The first and the most common ways of hiding likes count on Instagram is simply through the Advanced Settings.
To do so, create a post like you usually do. Now before you move forward, when you are at the part where you will need to Add Caption, click the Advanced Settings button at the bottom part, toggle down until you reach the option to “Hide like and view counts on this post.” Swipe the white button towards the right until the blue field turns grey.
Once you have selected that choice, you will also be shown the option to “Turn Off Commenting”.
Deciding over this will all be up to you. Just repeat the same procedure, and you will find yourself setting the post to almost private, expecting no count of interaction afterwards.
Second way of hiding likes on Instagram is by simply going to the post that you do not want the like count to show. Once you found it, you can see the three dots that looks like an ellipsis at the upper right-hand part of the post, which must be showing on your screen around this time. This is the same icon you click when you want to edit a caption, remove or add photo, or delete a video. Tap on this button once and instantly, options including “Hide like count” pops up. Choose that and you just did the second way of hiding likes on your Insta post.
Why Hide Likes on Instagram?
Just as signups in social media apps increases over time, the ages of those signing up went to as low as even the grade schoolers.
Chances are, parents or peers exposed them to such, or their interest in social interaction online really spiked up at such an early age. Instagram understands the social behavior of users as it also conducts study involving the number of users and the majority of those engaged on it, and several anomalies were observed.
It appears that teenagers, who are occupying a good cut in Instagram users overall pie, are typically depending their sense of being accepted, through the number of likes and comments on every post they create.
The notion that the more followers responding or engaging on one post, the more successful that person becomes. It may sound petty but that has become a harsh reality among the younger generations who are socially active.
Emotional health has become the most affected part of living a teenager’s life as they tend to get depressed and disheartened when something they made public or visible for their followers to see don’t get noticed.
While everyone seems to be interconnected in social media, it is utterly unfriendly, in a sense, that a photo or video posted with zero to no likes can damage the self-esteem of the kid, or even an adult, who did the posting. Worse, when a post is not pleasant at all, it can become a source of cyberbullying.
Likes count has become the new measure of acceptance. Mental health among these age type has gone sensitive considering they are soaked in the idea of having more likes and comments in a post means having more friends, followers, and social media engagements.
Why Not Hide Likes on Instagram?
Contrary to the good things about hiding likes on Instagram, there are certain set of people who would rather not do this, as it will go against their exposure goal. One of them are the entrepreneurs.
As a means of social proof, the higher like count there is, the more likely the business will succeed. That means, it has more followers.
Either the business is doing well that it reaches high likes count, or the business has been serving actual customers, delivering whatever is expected of them, and it shows on the number of followers commenting or reacting on the account’s every post.
Another set of people who would rather not hide their likes count on Instagram are the artists or the celebrities.
These people need a good number of likers and commenters in order to prove how famous they are in their online account, as it would equate their fame in real life. In fact, others would solicit likes and followings from fellow celebrities and fans, so as to make their profile look legitimate and being followed by a good number of people.
Brand owners are also depending the success of their business according to the number of like their Instagram page is growing. There is no chance they would hide their like counts, as it would vouch the brand’s presence in social media. Influencers and digital marketers are looking for more followings, especially if they are producing content that gets monetized after reaching a certain number of likes, comments, and followings.
