Instagram’s suggested posts feature makes scrolling through Instagram even more addicting. Suggested posts appear after you’ve reached the end of your feed, and contain recommended posts from users you don’t (yet) follow.
Before suggested posts existed, you probably remember scrolling through your Instagram feed, and knowing you hit the end when you saw the You’re All Caught Up message. Under the message, you’d see older Instagram posts that you already scrolled through. This was put in place to discourage you from spending hours on Instagram.
Now, the new suggested posts feature, as outlined on the Instagram Help Centre, is designed to keep you glued to Instagram. Instead of showing old posts at the end of your feed, you’ll now see an infinite number of recommended posts from users you haven’t followed yet.
For now, suggested posts only consist of photos, videos, and ads. Which means you won’t see any IGTV content or Reels just yet.
Just keep in mind that if you follow tons of Instagram users, and desperately need to clean up your Instagram, you may never scroll long enough to reach the beginning of the suggested posts feed!
That said, there’s a difference between the content you see in the Explore tab, and the content you’ll see from suggested posts. Instagram picks suggested posts based on the types of accounts you follow, as well as the posts you’ve liked or saved in the past.
On the other hand, the Explore feed shows posts that are more distant from your obvious interests.
If you come across a suggested post that you aren’t interested in, you can help change that. Suggested posts essentially have a “dislike button” that helps Instagram curate your feed.
When you see a post you dislike, tap the three dots in the top-right corner of the post. Select Not Interested, and Instagram will stop showing you related content.
And while you can’t eliminate suggested posts from your feed altogether, you can still go back to viewing old content from the users you follow. When you see the You’re All Caught Up notification at the top of your suggested posts feed, tap the View Older Posts link under that message.
Just like TikTok, Instagram now encourages endless scrolling through related content. To heat up the competition between TikTok and Instagram even more, Instagram has rolled out Reels, a 15-second video feature. But can Instagram really compete with TikTok?