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.
- 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
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.
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:
- Open Facebook Messenger.
- Find the chat you want to mute, tap and hold on it, then select Mute or Mute notifications.
- You can mute message notifications, call notifications, or both.
- You can also tap on a contact’s picture to go to their profile page and tap Mute at the top or select Notifications and mute or turn off the ones you don’t want.
Another option is to restrict people, which means you won’t get notifications about messages or calls and cannot message or call them. Existing chats will be removed from your main Chats list, but they can still be found under Message requests or by searching for the person. Restricted contacts can’t see when you’re online, see any new posts, or tell whether you have read their messages, and vice versa.
- Open Facebook Messenger.
- Find the contact you want to restrict and tap on their name or profile picture.
- Scroll down to tap Restrict, and tap Restrict X if you want to go ahead.
- You can review Restricted accounts by opening Settings and tapping Privacy & safety.
Perhaps you believe retweets ruined Twitter, or Musk’s Twitter takeover has wrecked your feed. If you plan on sticking around, consider limiting who can contact you, and start muting people you no longer want to hear from.
- Open Twitter, and go to the profile page for anyone you want to mute.
- Click the more (three dots) icon.
- Select Mute.
- You can also select the more (three dots) icon next to any post and choose Mute X or Mute this conversation.
Muting people does not stop them from being able to send you direct messages, but you can snooze conversations so you won’t get notifications every time a new message comes in. Here’s how:
- Open Twitter and tap the envelope icon to open your Direct Messages.
- Tap and hold on any conversation, and you can choose Snooze notifications.
- Select how long you want to snooze them for (1 hour, 8 hours, 1 week, or Forever).
Things are a little different on TikTok. You can tweak settings to limit who sees your videos, but you can’t mute people you follow. If you continually skip their videos quickly, the algorithm should learn that you don’t want to see them. You can also filter comments, mentions, and direct messages.
- Open TikTok and go to your Profile.
- Open the menu by tapping the three horizontal lines at the top right.
- Choose Settings and privacy.
- Tap on Privacy, and you can configure Comments, Mentions and tags, and Direct messages.
Thankfully, if you have a troublesome commenter on TikTok Live, you can mute them.
- When you are running a TikTok Live, tap the profile picture next to the commenter you want to mute.
- Tap Manage at the top right.
- Select Mute.
- Decide how long you want to mute them for (5 seconds, 30 seconds, 1 minute, 5 minutes, or Current LIVE only).
You can also unfollow people, and TikTok won’t notify them, but they can see that you no longer follow them by looking at their Follower page.
- Go to your Profile page.
- Select Following.
- Tap Following to the right of anyone you want to stop following.
It’s worth noting that you can also remove followers, so they can no longer see any of your content. They won’t be explicitly notified, but they may notice if they look at their Following page.
- Tap on your Profile.
- Select Followers.
- Tap the 3-dot icon next to the follower you want to remove.
- Select Remove this follower.
While Instagram has a Quiet Mode, all it does is pause notifications. If you want to stop that steady stream of inspirational quotes, nonsensical memes, or plates of food, you should mute your way to a better feed. Here’s how:
- Open the Instagram app and go to the profile of the person you want to mute.
- Click on Following under the username.
- Select Mute from the pop-up list.
- You can Mute Posts, Mute Story, or mute both.
You can also mute messages or group chats, like this:
- Tap on the messenger icon at the top right.
- Find the chat with the person or group you want to mute.
- Tap the “i” at the top right or the group name at the top.
- You can choose to Mute messages or Mute call notifications.
Although it is firmly focused on work, LinkedIn is social media. But since it has a well-deserved reputation for smug humble-brags, you may want to tweak your feed. Sadly, you only have a couple of options. You can mute people or pages you are not connected to (they may appear in your feed because connections commented, reacted, or shared). Here’s how:
- Open LinkedIn and find a post from a person or company you want to mute.
- Tap the three dots at the top right of the post.
- Select Mute X from the pop-up menu.
You can also remove people you are connected to from your feed by unfollowing them. LinkedIn does not tell them that you have unfollowed them, and you will still be connected. But LinkedIn will notify them if you should decide to follow them again in the future.
- Open LinkedIn and find a post from someone you want to unfollow.
- Tap the three dots at the top right of the post.
- Select Unfollow X from the pop-up menu.
- Alternatively, you can go to their profile page and tap More, then choose Unfollow.
If you have group chats blowing up your phone or someone in your life who messages a little too much, you can mute those chats. Here’s how:
- Open WhatsApp and go to the Chats tab.
- Tap and hold on any chat, and select Mute from the pop-up menu.
- Decide how long to mute for (8 hours, 1 week, or Always).
You can also mute people by visiting their profile page.
- Tap on the name of the person you want to mute or search for them by typing their name into the search bar on the Chats tab.
- Tap on Mute.
Decide how long to mute for (8 hours, 1 week, or Always).
