How to know if an Instagram contact is online

Privacy on social networks is not a utopia. Although we do not read the contract conditions of a social network when we enter it and our data is going to be 'sold' to companies to offer us personalized service, we can configure them to make it a little more private. Bearing in mind that total privacy only exists in the privacy of your home, both Facebook and Instagram, to give two examples of popular social networks, contain different settings to 'shield' their content and make it accessible only to whoever you Interest you.

Find out if the person you're interested in on Instagram is available

Instagram is the protagonist of a new function that makes us feel less sheltered, again. Now, as if it were the old Messenger, or the Facebook chat, we will be able to find out which of our contacts are currently looking at and consulting the social network Thus, next to your thumbnail image, within the direct messages section, a small green circle will appear if you are currently active on the social network. If this is not the case, the time it has been inactive will appear, to give you an idea of ​​its activity.

If you want to learn how to see if your contacts are active or not, we are going to explain how to do it. It's very simple and only you'll need a couple of steps. Pick up your mobile, open the Instagram application and follow the steps that we show you below.

On the page where you see the photos of your contacts, look at the top right. We have two icons, an orange television, where we can see the videos that popular Instagram accounts upload, and a little paper plane in which the chats are stored and direct messages that have been made (or have been made) through the Stories. In this last screen we are going to enter and see our contacts, enclosed in a circular thumbnail. If a small green circle appears, it means that you can talk to that person. Whether she answers you or not depends on her.

How to turn off the activity feature on Instagram

But don't worry, because the option for the world to know that you are, at that moment, engrossed in watching the social network and its Stories, can be disabledTo change this function and prevent people from knowing if you are online, you must do the following steps.We advise you, again, to have your mobile handy while we carry them out.

Open the Instagram application and enter, this time, in your profile page, where your published photos are. You must click on the three-point menu that you see located at the top right of the screen. A new configuration screen will open.

In this configuration screen we are going to look for the 'Privacy and security' setting and then 'Activity status' . Here you must deactivate the two options that appear, which are:

• Show activity status. Here the contact will know when is the last time you have been active on the social network. By deactivating this function, the phrase 'Active 4 hours ago' or similar will not appear. If you deactivate this function, you will not be able to know if someone is active on Instagram or since when they were.
• Show chat activity. Allows users we send messages to if you are currently typing or using the camera.

It's that easy to have a little more privacy on Instagram. In the end, the user can choose, to a lesser extent, of course, everything that can be taught and not. It's a matter of looking carefully at the settings of each social network.