Instagram will celebrate its 12th birthday this year, which is just as staggering to think about for the service’s users as for the product itself. Think about when you first joined, years ago, and how much life you’ve lived since then. Marriage, kids, new job, personal growth — it’s likely you’re a completely different person from when you first joined. That’s one reason why people might be fascinated to use a fun tool that lets you jump back in time to check out the very first Instagram post you “liked.”
Instagram itself, of course, has also changed in some pretty major ways since its launch in 2010. Such that the “likes” themselves — that is, the act of scrolling through the main feed and interacting with posted photos — isn’t even the primary way that many users engage with the product anymore. For those people, scrolling through the Stories strip at the top of the app is the primary way they use the app.
Find the first Instagram post you liked
That said, there are some simple steps you can follow to find the first Instagram post you liked whenever you first signed up for your account. Which is almost like a fun time capsule, in a way.
Here’s how you do it:
- Open the mobile app, then click on your profile.
- See the three horizontal lines in the top right? Tap there next. From there, choose “Settings.”
- You should see a search bar at the top, where you can then type “Manage Likes.”
- Voila, now you should see every image that you’ve ever “liked” on Instagram. The final step, though?
- In the upper right, you should see an option to filter these results. Choose “oldest to newest,” and then there you go. The first image should be the first Instagram post you “liked.”
Is Instagram losing its cool?
Pretty wild to see your first “like,” right?
I mentioned above, meanwhile, how the nostalgia of the “first Instagram post you liked” is a throwback to a much different Instagram.
Along these lines, Bloomberg has a great piece out penned by Sarah Frier and Brad Stone that takes a look at the Meta-owned platform being having been supplanted in popularity by TikTok. Their piece, to be sure, revisits all the familiar themes. That the Reels feature across Meta properties is just a TikTok knockoff. That the company formerly known as Facebook is treading water, trying to stave off irrelevancy and oblivion by copying the cool kids of social media.
Even Instagram, the darling of the Meta empire, is not immune. Instagram was, in fact, temporarily down for many people on Thursday, May 26. There was a time when it seemed like that kind of thing was talked about with alarm on other social media platforms, whenever it happened. Now? Well, like I said, different days for the platform.
