You can now stop stressing and just hide Facebook & Insta likes

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It’s always nice to get likes on your Facebook and Instagrams posts, but those like counts are a cause of great stress for a lot of us. If you don’t want any premature grey locks, Facebook is now giving users the option to just hide like counts on both platforms.

Social likes anxiety

The company has been testing the feature for years now and it seems they’re finally ready for launch. It’s probably a good thing too as Instagram was ranked as “the most detrimental to young people’s mental health and wellbeing” in a 2017 study by the Royal Society for Public Health UK. According to experts, removing the like button or like counts could improve things for some Instagram and Facebook users. They argue that not being occupied by likes might help reduce anxiety and social pressures.

“We tested hiding like counts to see if it might depressurize people’s experience on Instagram,” an Instagram spokesperson explained.  “What we heard from people and experts was that not seeing like counts was beneficial for some, and annoying to others, particularly because people use like counts to get a sense for what’s trending or popular, so we’re giving you the choice.”

Facebook hide likes
Image: Facebook

Flexibility in hiding

If you want to give it a go there are a few options. Both Instagram and Facebook now have a toggle to hide like counts on all posts in your feed. You can also opt to hide your own like counts to others. But if you don’t want to be all that rigorous it’s also possible to only hide the like counts of certain Instagram posts. Facebook users will have to wait a few more weeks to get the same power. So what’s next? Hiding follower counts?

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