Once upon a time, a terrible take on social media might have sucked me into an argument. Nowadays, it simply speeds my curmudgeonly decline. My attempt to break out of the echo chamber was a short-lived experiment that almost killed my faith in humanity. Despite the negative impact of doomscrolling, I remain hopelessly addicted to my phone but reluctant to delete my social media accounts. Thankfully, there is another way.
Free yourself from manufactured outrage and the fear of missing out. Life is too short to subject yourself to the ravings of every misguided relative, drunk friend, or semi-acquaintance. It’s time you learned how to mute. While we’re about it, you may also want to consider how to control who sees your posts and how to tidy up your social media accounts.
Table of Contents
- What is Muting?
- How to Mute People on Facebook
- How to Mute People on Twitter
- How to Mute People on TikTok
- How to Mute People on Instagram
- How to Mute People on LinkedIn
- How to Mute People on WhatsApp
What Is Muting?
When you mute someone on social media, you stop seeing things they post in your feed. Mute a chat and you stop getting notifications about new messages. You can still look at their profile to see what they’re posting or open a group chat to catch up on messages you missed. The beauty of muting is that the people you mute do not know you muted them.
Learning to mute people and groups is the best way to avoid the potential conflict of unfriending, blocking, or leaving a group chat. It may be healthier and more honest to cull your friend list, but the reality is that unfriending and blocking can have real-world consequences. People get offended. They may want to know why you blocked them. If you don’t fancy dealing with that, muting is the way to go.
How to Mute People on Facebook
While Meta is rethinking the Facebook feed, cutting all the posts you would rather not see still requires some input. There are a couple of ways to mute on Facebook.
- Open Facebook.
- Go to the profile page of anyone you want to mute.
- Tap the Friends button at the top and choose Unfollow from the pop-down menu.
- Alternatively, you can tap the menu (three dots) next to any post in your feed that you dislike and select Snooze X for 30 days to mute them temporarily, or Unfollow to mute them permanently.
- To mute Facebook stories, simply long-press on the story, choose Mute X’s story, and select your preferred time frame (24 hours, 1 week, or Indefinitely).
You can also mute and ignore people or group chats on Facebook Messenger. Here’s how:
