Who did you follow first?

The app hides the order

In the app, Following → Sorted by lets you choose “Date followed: Earliest”. On long lists it can be slow and shows no dates. Your data download shows the exact date for every account.

Where to look

In the Instagram data download, the file following.json lists every account you follow with a timestamp. Next to it, recently_unfollowed_profiles.json lists accounts you unfollowed recently, also with dates.

See your follow history in order

1. Download your data with Followers and following selected, in JSON format.
2. Open the ZIP in Unwrapped. Everything is read on your device.
3. Sort your following list by date. You’ll see the first account you followed, how many you followed each year and accounts you followed years ago and forgot.

This is also a quick way to clean up old follows: the oldest ones are often accounts you no longer care about.

FAQ