Have you ever heard of the followers-to-following ratio on Instagram? I hadn’t either until recently… and the concept surprised me. In short, it’s just being aware of the amount of users you follow on Instagram versus the amount of users that follow you. After some searching, I noticed there’s a world of articles about the topic online. If you go to Google and search “followers-to-following ratio,” you can read more reasons as to why users pay attention to it. Some of the articles described why the ratio mattered and even how to calculate the perfect ratio. The real question is: Do people actually pay attention to their followers-to-following ratio? Let’s get into what this ratio means first.
The article that stuck out to me was “What Is A Good Follower to Following Ratio?” (https://hypeauditor.com/blog/what-is-a-good-follower-to-following-ratio/) by Candice King. King’s article simply explained that having a good followers-to-following ratio on social media, “good,” meaning having more followers than accounts following, gives you credibility. For example, having more followers than following makes an influencer appear influential, credible, and popular. A good ratio could also show that the user values following people for their quality over quantity. Then, the article goes on to show recommended ratios social media users should go by to attain the qualities listed above.
While these statements may be helpful and even truthful for influencers and brands, I wanted to apply the phenomena to women in college. The reason I sought out this group was because I’ve heard women between the ages of 18-25 make comments about the pressures of social media and the followers-to-following ratio. I know this even more so because I am one of these women now. I would be lying if I said I didn’t unfollow users who decided to unfollow me. Also, after hearing about the ratio, I noticed I followed many inactive accounts. That may be my reasoning, but I needed to uncover others’ reasonings. And maybe I’m hoping I’m not alone on this – lol.
I sent a Google Form survey to a group chat of 19 women enrolled in college and to 54 women in the University of Tampa’s Her Campus Group Me. Two days after sending out the survey, I received 18 responses. Here’s what the survey asked and the results:
- How many Instagram accounts do you own/belong to?
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Most of the participants owned/belonged to 1-2 Instagram accounts. The reason I wrote “belonged to” was regarding accounts the participants possibly shared with someone else. - Which Instagram account do you pay the closest attention to? (Monitoring likes, comments, views, followers, etc.) Is it considered your “main” account?
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The majority wrote that they paid the closest attention to their “main” or “personal” Instagram account. - Do you pay attention to the ratio of Followers-to-Following on that Instagram account?
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The majority said they paid attention/cared a little bit about the ratio on their prioritized Instagram account. Then, 33.3% said they didn’t pay attention/care about the ratio at all. A small percentage said they paid attention/cared a lot. - Do you pay attention to the ratio of Followers-to-Following on your other Instagram accounts?
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Looking at the majority of the graph, there is an even split between not paying attention at all to the ratio on their less-prioritized accounts and not paying attention as much as they do to their “main” account. - Why do you pay attention to (or not pay attention to) the Followers-to-Following ratio on your Instagram account(s)?
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Here are some quotes from this question:
- “Social pressure to have more followers, feel like more people “care.”
- “Because I like to follow celebrities, influencers, etc and I know they aren’t gonna follow back all the people who follow them.”
- “I just never think to pay attention to this ratio.”
- “I don’t like when the number of my following is crazy high compared to my followers. I don’t like the way it looks to the eyes personally.“
- “I like to see if people follow a ton of people or are exclusive with who they follow.”
- “I never saw it as important.”
- “Personally, I usually always follow accounts that follow me back if I know them or share mutual friends, so as long as the ratio is somewhat even I don’t care. If my following is much higher than my followers though, I would go through my following and remove accounts I don’t interact with often or don’t follow me back.“
- “I used to care A LOT about my ratio in early high school, I thought I would look “uncool” if I was following more people than followed me. Now, I’ve realized that it literally doesn’t matter. Like at all! I follow whoever I wanna follow and rarely look at my follower list!”
analysis & Conclusion
So, maybe I’m not alone! Let’s look deeper. First, the survey shows that the majority of participants paid the closest attention to their “main” Instagram account. That’s pretty relatable and understandable!
Next, we learned that most of the participants only paid attention/cared about the ratio a little bit. This percentage began to make sense when looking at the responses to question five. Those responses showed that there was a certain extent to which the participants paid attention/cared. For example, some participants just manage their followers-to-following ratio when it comes to mutuals, and others like the appearance of the numerical difference.
When it came to monitoring the ratio on their other Instagram accounts, if the participants had any, they mainly didn’t pay attention at all or paid less attention than they did to their main account.
As a result, you can tell this ratio is more than just influencers and brands looking at these types of things. Even if it’s to an extent, the majority of the participants did pay attention to their ratio. I’m in the same boat as users trying to unfollow users who aren’t mutual or users who are inactive on Instagram. Paying attention to the ratio is not really that important to me; I just looked through my following recently because I’ve had my main account for about a decade, and there are lots of accounts collecting dust in my following list! Do you pay attention to your followers-to-following ratio? Will you now?
Please e-mail me at mya.cocchiola@spartans.ut.edu if you have any comments about the topic! I would love to know what you think and if this gave you some new perspective on our generation using social media!