Cleaning your Instagram feed: instructions for an impossible mission

Do you sometimes feel like Instagram is draining your energy or making you irritable? If your "Explore" is full of negative news, unrealistic living standards or gossip that doesn't resonate with you, perhaps it's time to do a "digital detox" on your social network.

Although customizing the feed is a herculean task - because every time you open it, the app returns to the algorithmic default feed (the home screen) - it is also an exercise in digital sovereignty. The platform doesn't make it easier, but it's a way to resume the role of subject and stop being just an object of the algorithm.

Even though it takes work, the good news is that Instagram provides, with just a few taps, tools that give the user back control over what appears on their timeline. You can reset the algorithm's recommendations, activate the chronological feed or mark content as unwanted.

But what is clear is that the overwhelming majority of people do none of this. They continue to scroll through a feed assembled by an AI (artificial intelligence) that never asked them what they wanted to see - it just observes what keeps them connected for longer.

The paradox is uncomfortable: there are tools, many tutorials, but inertia wins. Deep down, big tech doesn't want you to be a "curator" of your own time; they want you to be a fluid consumer, or the passenger in the back seat, being driven to a destination you didn't choose.

Interviewed by CNN Brasil, psychologist Adriana de Araújo, master in Psychology and author of 17 books, explained that this distance between knowing and acting has an explanation: "people don't just work on logic."

For her, asking someone to control their own feed is "like asking someone to maintain a strict diet while living inside a restaurant, a bakery or a true paradise of sweets." The difficulty, summarizes the psychologist, "is not a lack of will: the scenario was designed to overcome human control."

AI resignation: how does the psychology of digital impotence work?

AI resignation is the overwhelming and inevitable force that weakens young people's perception of their own power to act - Katemangostar/Magnific
In a study recently published in the journal Future Humanities, researchers identified a phenomenon - which they named AI resignation - "as an overwhelming and seemingly inevitable force, capable of weakening young people's perception of their own power to act - both on a personal and political level - in relation to the future."

It's not about laziness or ignorance. For the authors, it is, in fact, a structurally produced arrangement, generated by the intertwining between data infrastructures and narratives that present AI as inevitable. The user does not give up out of weakness, but because the environment was built to make giving up seem rational.

There is a direct parallel with behavioral psychology. "When people try to control or change something and they can't, it's common for them to stop trying," says Araújo. "We are dealing with systems that are much faster and more sophisticated than our own consciousness," he says.

According to the psychologist, this is not a conscious choice: "people end up giving up control without realizing it. This reduces mental effort and exhaustion, but it comes at a high cost, which is the loss of autonomy in day-to-day choices." When this loss goes unnoticed, it "becomes an unconscious pattern."

The study reveals a worrying fact: teenagers who try to limit screen time by blocking applications end up deactivating the restrictions and using the services even more. The worst thing is that young people interpret this structural problem - addictive design - as individual guilt.

It's not a personal failure, says Araújo. "When a teenager activates blocks and then deactivates them, this shows that the system works as it was designed." The risk is to internalize the blame - "I'm weak", "I can't handle it" -, which worsens the behavior: "the energy starts to be used to try to regulate oneself, instead of creating strategies for change", he says.

How does design bind you to what you didn't choose?

Instagram's feed began to show the platform's interests in keeping the user's attention for as long as possible - Jenny Lorenzo/Giphy
Instagram's recommendation system was built to predict what you are most likely to enjoy - not based on what you declare you want, but on what your behavior reveals. Everything is read: the pause time in a video, the swipe speed in a photo, how much you rewatched an image.

When a user marks something as "not interested", the algorithm records the signal. But, if the following behavior contradicts this statement - watching a similar Reels to the end - the platform prioritizes what he did, not what he said. Action speaks louder than expressed desire.

Today, the feed no longer reflects the user's real interests and starts to show the platform's interests in keeping their attention for as long as possible. They're completely different things, even though they look the same when you're scrolling in the dark.

"A person can always choose, but they need more energy and awareness to do something about it", says Araújo. "Many people wouldn't know exactly what kind of behavior they should take to change the algorithm. It's not a 'I want this' or 'I don't want that' button."

Fighting the tide: tips for cleaning your feed and detoxing on Instagram

Reducing screen time is a daily exercise: small adjustments to settings help you regain control over what appears in the feed - Freepik
The first step is to tap the network logo at the top of the screen and change the default feed to "Following" to only see the profiles you follow. It is worth noting that this option cannot be set as a permanent default - it needs to be activated manually with each access.

Then go to Profile > menu (three lines) > Content Preferences > Reset Suggested Content. This process doesn't delete your account or who you follow, but it significantly reduces the influence of recent history on recommendations. In the same menu, you can adjust the "Sensitive content" and "Political content" filters, which make the feed more predictable without eliminating the algorithm.

Whenever unwanted content appears, tap the three dots on the post and select "I'm not interested". This adjustment needs to be consistent: the algorithm records the signal, but may ignore it if your subsequent behavior - such as watching similar videos until the end - indicates otherwise.

Periodically review who you follow: profiles that no longer make sense continue to feed the algorithm with outdated data. Also pay attention to the time you dedicate to each content - leaving a video in the first few seconds signals disinterest more strongly than any button.

Finally, use the "Favorites" feed (accessed through the same menu as "Following") to prioritize specific accounts. While it can still include ads, it reduces algorithmic interference by highlighting posts from manually selected profiles. Just like "Following", this feed cannot be set as a permanent default.

For Araújo, psychological work in these cases involves monitoring these emotions and building new ways of dealing with stimuli - which includes changing the environment, reducing triggers and creating external limits. "We are dealing with systems that are highly efficient at shaping behavior. Ignoring this completely distorts the problem," he concludes.

Instagram announces new exclusive tools for subscribers

Source: CNN