See When You Followed Someone on Instagram: Considering the current popularity of Instagram, it goes without saying that every social media fan must be using Instagram already to follow people they know, celebrities, and other strangers. The people you follow on Instagram depend totally on how you know them, what kind of people you like to follow, and other things.
For instance, you may want to follow a celebrity because you are interested in learning more about their lifestyle or keeping up-to-date with what’s going on in their lives.
One important question is, “When did i follow someone on Instagram?” or “Can you see when you followed someone on Instagram?”
If you are looking for the answers too, welcome! You have come to the right place.
In this post, we will take a look at the steps you can follow to see how long you’ve been following someone on Instagram.
Stick around till the end.
Can You See How Long You’ve Been Following Someone on Instagram?
Let’s say you followed an Instagram account on a certain date. You are checking your followers currently, and you have no idea how you followed a certain someone and when you did that. You also want to know since when you have been connected to that person. That’s the only way to know how long you’ve followed this Instagram account since.
Earlier, Instagram had an activity section where you could easily see when you followed someone, know the photos somebody likes, people the person followed, their comments, and other activities from the dashboard.
That feature, however, is no longer available.
If the activity section is brought back, you could easily track how long you have been following someone on Instagram by tracking the first activity of the user on your profile. The feature only shows the activity of the person you are following.
Well, Instagram clearly does not have any built-in tool that could provide you insights like these. You can’t know when you started following someone on Instagram using any built-in tool, as Instagram does not really offer this feature.
But what if we tell you there are other ways to see when you started following someone on Instagram?
Well, that’s possible.
How to See When You Started Following Someone on Instagram
Method 1: Rearrange the Following List
If you have seen your following list on Instagram, it is mostly arranged in the order you followed people. For example, those you have followed recently are at last, and the ones you followed earlier are listed first. This list doesn’t give you the date you followed people on the platform, but it does tell you who you followed earlier.
The Instagram follower and following list can also be arranged in chronological order, where the list is sorted by the user’s initials. You can also read a complete guide on How to See Recent Followers on Instagram.
Method 2: See the First Message on Instagram
This may not be an ideal way to track the date someone followed you on Instagram, but it works really well. If you are best buddies or friends from childhood, chances are you must have exchanged texts on Instagram.
All you have to do is scroll your chat to the top to locate the date you followed someone on Instagram. You can also read a complete guide on How to See First Message on Instagram Without Scrolling.
Method 3: Check their Likes and Comments on Your Post
Almost every friend of mine leaves a comment on my Instagram posts, and I am pretty sure it happens to each one of us. If it’s your favorite person or someone you are really close to, chances are they must be leaving comments on your post. So, that’s one way to get a rough idea of the date they started following you on Instagram.
All you have to do is scroll down to your first post on Instagram and check the list of the people who liked it. See if they have liked your post. You have to scroll up and keep checking the list of likes on each post. This will help you find out the first post they liked or commented on.
Now, that means they started following you on the date you posted this picture or a few days before that. This also means that you followed them on Instagram after you got their follow request or vice versa. Either way, it gives you a rough date.
Method 4: Download Your Instagram Data
If you do this step properly, there is a very high chance you will be able to locate the date you started following a person on Instagram or they started following you. Here are the steps for downloading Instagram data.
- Log into your Instagram account and Click on the hamburger icon on your profile page (located on the top right section of the screen).
- Select the “Security and privacy” options.
- Tap “data download” and click on the “request download” button.
- Instagram will send a link containing your Instagram data to your email.
- Open the link in the zip folder and get a file named connections.json. You can open this file on notepad.
- Copy the content in this file and visit the Online JSON Viewer website. Paste the copied content on this website.
- Head to the Viewers tab and click on each entry listed here to collect the details of the date and time you followed these accounts.
As accurate as this method is, it is not the easiest one. You need to be tech-savvy to follow the steps as instructed. If you get this right, you can know when you followed your Instagram friends.
Note: Instagram may take 24-48 hours to send you the file containing the data.
FAQs
Can someone know when I followed them on Instagram?
While there is no direct feature telling people when you followed their Instagram accounts, they can know the date and time you followed them or they followed you by requesting Instagram data.
Does Instagram have any feature that shows the date I followed certain users on Instagram?
Unfortunately, no! Instagram doesn’t have any feature that tells you the date you followed people on the social site.
Also Read:
