Instagram Announces New Restriction on All Users

For many years, hashtags have been an important part of social media, helping users ensure their content is seen by the correct audience. While that is still the case, Instagram has made a pretty significant tweak to its hashtags in a recent update.

In a new update, Instagram has started restricting the number of hashtags that users are allowed to use when sharing content on the app.

Only Five Hashtags

On Friday, Instagram announced that users will be limited to five or fewer hashtags on all reels or posts. The social media giant indicated that it will begin implementing the restriction gradually.

The company said that it believes the change will improve both content performance and the overall user experience on the app.

"Instagram will gradually update the number of hashtags that you can include in a caption for a reel or post to 5. We find that using fewer (up to 5), more targeted hashtags rather than many generic ones can improve both your content's performance and people's experience on Instagram," Instagram wrote in a post on Friday.

This change comes several months after TikTok made a similar change on its platform.

Tips For Using Hashtags

Along with the announcement of the change, Instagram also provided some guidance to users about how to use hashtags to boost performance.

Instagram advises users to be "intentional" with the hashtags they choose, making sure they are relevant to the audience they are trying to reach.

"Be intentional with the hashtags you include and focus on ones that are relevant to the content you're publishing. For example, if you're a beauty creator, use beauty-related hashtags to help people interested in beauty content find you," Instagram wrote.

This means avoiding generic hashtags, which it says can actually hurt a post's performance.

"Don't spam your caption with too many irrelevant or generic hashtags, like #reels or #explore. Those types of hashtags don't actually help your content appear in places like Explore and could, in fact, hurt your content's performance," Instagram added.

Mixed Reviews

The announcement led to some mixed reactions from users in the comments with some praising the move while others thought it was unnecessary.

"Another update nobody asked for," one user wrote.

"Honestly, this update is probably the worst. A hashtag limit of only 5 is actually insane. The old 30 hashtag limit was perfect. This update is something that nobody asked for, or wanted," someone else added.

"Thank you for this and for the tips," a user commented.

"This would be awesome if hashtags worked like they used to," another user added.

"Can we go back to Instagram actually showing our contents to followers and non followers?" someone else wrote.

We'll have to see how the change impacts user experience.