Why You’re Losing Instagram Followers and How To Fix It (2024)

Are you or someone you know suddenly losing a bunch of followers on Instagram? Don’t worry, you’re not the only one.

It’s happening to you, and it’s happening to me (in May of 2019, my ceramics-based account, @potteryforall, went from gaining 6000+ followers per month to losing 1000+ followers per month). It’s also happening to many other people we know on Instagram. In fact, according to the Instagram influencer-focused platform Fohr, as of the last quarter of 2020 over half of all “content creators” are now losing followers, not gaining them.

What’s going on?

Instagram doesn’t release in-app users stats, so there’s no way to know exactly. However, there are some clear, overarching trends in the way we use the app that can give us valuable insight into why so many of us are experiencing this downturn (check out my article about Is Instagram dying? to read a bit more about the topic).

Before we begin, it’s worthwhile to point out that it’s very, very unlikely that Instagram changed something within the app with the aim of making accounts lose followers. In other words, Instagram (the…