If there’s one thing all humans can agree with, regardless of their age, location, or gender, it is that rejection stings. It isn’t easy to deal with and has broken the spirit of many. However, it’s also an inevitable part of life. Be it the online world or the offline; you can’t expect your life to be free from all kinds of rejections. But the experience that’s even more difficult than being rejected is not knowing if you’ve been rejected. It could rob your sleep and peace.
If you’re on Instagram and are dealing with a similar crisis, you’ve come to just the right place, for we have the perfect solution to your dilemma. Stick with us till the end to see if it works for you.
Does Instagram notify you if your follow request has been declined?
Before we get to the answer to your query, let’s explore the possibility of notifications on Instagram. Whenever a social media platform you’re active on needs to tell you something important, how do they communicate with you? Through emails and notifications, with the latter being a more commonly used alternative.
Whether someone liked your picture, reel, or story, sent you a follow request, commented on your content, or even mentioned you in their posts, how did you find out about it? You received a notification about it from the app, didn’t you?
So, it is natural to wonder if you receive a notification about people declining your follow requests on the platform. But is that really the case? Unfortunately, not, and here’s why:
Instagram sees the action of declining a follow request as a personal activity of a user. And because it respects its users’ privacy, the platform chooses not to share with you any notification about your follow request being declined.
If this sounds unfair to you, wait till you need to decline a request and wish they didn’t find out about it (at least not right away).
How to Tell If Someone Declined Your Follow Request on Instagram
Now that we’ve already ruled out the possibility of receiving a notification from Instagram about your follow request being declined, you might be disappointed. After all, there isn’t any other way of knowing it for sure, is there? Thankfully, you’ve asked the right question because there is.
Allow us to introduce you to the ways in which you can tell if someone declined your follow request on Instagram.
This might come as a surprise to some of you, but the first and simplest way of knowing for sure if your request has been declined lies on the very profile of this person. Confused? Allow us to explain.
We’re sure you must be familiar with how to send a follow request on Instagram, but let’s jog your memory a bit. To send someone a follow request, you go to their profile and tap on the blue Follow button displayed towards the top, right below their username, display picture, and bio.
As soon as you send them a request, this Follow button changes into a Requested button. And it will remain that way until they take action on your request (no matter how long they take to do so).
If this person accepts your request, the Requested button changes to the Following button. On the other hand, if they decline your request, the button will change back to the old Follow, as it appeared before you sent the request.
In other words, the change from Requested to Follow button is a clear indication that your request has indeed been declined. And how will you find out about this change? By simply visiting their profile on Instagram.
Resend them a request to see if they decline it again
If you opened this person’s profile and found the Follow button instead of Requested, they’ve probably declined your request. But are you certain they did it on purpose, or could it also have been a mistake? Because in the case of the latter, you have no reason to worry.
Mistakes like these happen all the time, and there’s no point beating yourself (or someone else) up over it. What you can do instead is send them another request on Instagram and wait for them to respond this time. If they accept it this time, you can let bygones be bygones and move forward.
However, if they decline your request once again this time, it’s clear that there’s something going on.
Ask them about it up-front
So, this person has declined your follow request twice on Instagram. There’s no chance that it could be coincident. So, what are the other possibilities you could consider at this point? Well, the possibilities are endless, but all lead to one conclusion: they don’t want you to follow them on the platform.
There are two ways you can deal with this revelation now. You could either accept it and move on, or if you’re the kind that needs closure, asking them up-front is a good idea as well. But because this advice is subjective, it’s important to evaluate your relationship with this person before taking the step.
No response could also be a sign
You’d think that accepting a follow request or declining it are the only two ways of responding to a request on Instagram. But it isn’t necessarily true. Sometimes, when a person doesn’t want you to find out they deleted your request, they’ll simply just let it sit in their profile for as long as they like.
So, if you send someone a follow request on Instagram and are aware that they’ve been using it but haven’t replied to your request yet, know that they’re probably doing it intentionally and act accordingly.
The bottom line
With this, we’ve reached the bottom of our blog. Our topic of discussion today was about the follow requests on Instagram, and how to tell if yours has been declined.
We first established how (and why) Instagram doesn’t send out notifications in such matters, as they deem it private and sensitive for the users. However, if you really want to check the status of any follow request you sent, going through the receiver’s profile can tell you a lot.
If you’re facing any other Instagram-related issue, head over to the Instagram section and check for a solution!
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