with Blair Quane
Check out Blair's advice on how to make your Instagram story anonymous and the pros and cons of doing this…
At its heart, social media is all about sharing. We share our lives, our thoughts, our outfits, our vacations. We share what we had for breakfast, often with an audience of strangers.
But for lots of reasons, there may be times when you want to share something without attaching your name to it. Maybe you’re sharing something from your workplace that has a no social media policy. Maybe you’re sharing something personal that you think can help others, but you aren’t ready to have it traced back to you. This is when you want to make your Instagram story anonymous.
Maybe you just want to share something you thought was funny without upsetting people who know you.
While Instagram wants to encourage you to use your name and your profile to post everything you share, you don’t have to. It’s possible to share a Story on Instagram and keep it anonymous at the same time.
Let’s take a look at the process for making your Instagram story anonymous.
Instagram Stories
Instagram Stories, introduced in August 2016, have become one of the platform's most popular features. Designed to offer users a way to share moments of their day without the permanence of a traditional Instagram post, Stories provide a more spontaneous and engaging way to connect with followers.
Instagram Stories are short-lived photo or video posts that disappear after 24 hours. Unlike regular posts, which remain on a user’s profile indefinitely unless deleted, Stories offer a temporary glimpse into a user's daily activities, thoughts, or creative expressions. This ephemeral nature encourages more casual and frequent sharing, creating a sense of immediacy and authenticity.
Since their inception, Instagram Stories have seen exponential growth in popularity. Within a year of their launch, Stories had amassed over 250 million daily active users. These days, that number has grown to 500 million – a truly astonishing figure.
Stories are great for individuals who want to share aspects of their lives creatively, but they have also been widely adopted by businesses, both online and off-line, who want to increase their presence. The temporary nature of Instagram stories makes them perfect for frequent updates, and a lot of businesses use them to establish a regular connection with potential customers.
If you’re concerned about who may be viewing your profile, check out this video below on how to see who has been looking at your Instagram information.
What is Instagram story anonymous?
Basically, this is a workaround that allows you to share stories to Instagram without revealing your identity. While regular Instagram stories show your username and profile picture, anonymous stories don’t. That means you can share information that might be sensitive or just keep a low profile on social media while still sharing your content.
Why be anonymous?
At first, it might seem a little strange making your Instagram story anonymous. After all, the whole platform is designed to make it easier to share your life with others. Plus, because it’s built around sharing photographs, Instagram is all about sharing snapshots of your personality and your life.
But there lots of reasons why you may not be comfortable doing that. For example:
- You want to protect your privacy. These days, Instagram is much more than just a hobby. For some people, it can be a full-time career. And many businesses are active on Instagram, seeking out new customers. In that case, you may want to post your business to keep it separate from your private life.
- You’re concerned about security. Online security is something we should all be more aware of, and sharing photos with your name attached can be a big security risk. Sharing photos of what you’re doing throughout the day can help stalkers and criminals track where you are, who you are with, and what you are doing. Posting stories anonymously can help protect you from identity theft, stalking, and harassment.
- You want to share something sensitive. Maybe it’s something you saw at work, but you don’t want people to be able to connect your real life to what you’re sharing. Maybe it’s something funny your drunken uncle said at Thanksgiving, but you would rather it not get back to your family. Or maybe you want to share something extremely personal that you know can help other people going through something similar, but you’re worried it could have harmful effects if someone who knows you were to see it. Posting your stories anonymously can help to protect you from the sometimes negative consequences of sharing things online.
How to make your Instagram story anonymous
- Create a separate account. This could be an account for your business, or just an anonymous account you use for posting stories without attaching your name. Make sure you don’t attach any personal information to this account that anyone could find out.
Instagram account creation screen.
Image credit: https://designwizard.com/blog/how-to-create-an-instagram-account/
- Turn off location services so that Instagram doesn’t know where you posted from.
- Use a VPN. If you really want to protect your privacy, consider installing a Virtual Private Network on your phone and activating it before you post so that Instagram can’t tell where you are.
- Create your story.
- Share to Close Friends. Instagram allows you to choose who your story is shared to, so you can filter out strangers and make sure that your story is only visible to the people you want to see it. Remember, though, that you can’t prevent them from showing it to other people simply by showing them their phone – at least for the 24 hours that the story is active.
- Avoid personal details. Make sure that your story doesn’t reveal who you are by referencing your workplace, your home, or other information that could help someone identify you. If you are in the story, you may want to use an app to disguise your voice or your face to preserve your anonymity.
Pros and cons of making your Instagram story anonymous
Before making the decision on whether to post anonymously or not, it’s important to understand that there are both pros and cons to doing this. Let’s look at some of the positives:
- Posting anonymously can encourage honesty. Often, people are more likely to tell the truth when they know there are no consequences to what they say, so if you want accurate answers to questions, being anonymous may be the best way to go.
- Freedom to post what you like. When you post anonymously, you can share what you truly feel, without worrying that it might upset someone or harm your image or career.
- As we discussed earlier, posting anonymously can help keep you safe online.
There are also some drawbacks to posting an anonymous Instagram story. For example:
- Anonymous posts can be used to harass or bully other users.
- Posting anonymously doesn’t help to build your personal brand, because nobody knows it’s you who made the post.
- Some people may be ruder to an anonymous poster. When they don’t know who’s behind the post, it’s easy to forget that there’s a real human being there, which may make some people more likely to say hurtful things.
Other ways to protect your privacy on Instagram
Posting anonymous stories can help you protect your privacy on Instagram while still building a following. And if you’re concerned about your privacy on Instagram, there are some other ways you can protect your identity while still using this popular platform.
- Making your account private means that only approved users can see your posts. That way, you get to choose who you interact with.
Instagram private account screenshot.
Image credit: https://www.avast.com/c-change-instagram-privacy-settings
- Hide posts and Stories from specific users. You can create a Close Friends list and choose to only share your Stories with them so that you know who is seeing your content. Plus, you can exclude individual followers from seeing your Stories.
- Restrict or block users who harass, stalk, bully, troll, or interact with you in ways you don’t want.
- Control comments on your posts to filter out offensive content.
- To protect the anonymity of other users, you can enable them to ask you anonymous questions.
Image credit: https://socialpros.co/instagram-anonymous-questions/
- View stories anonymously. Note that this is against the Instagram terms of service, so it can get you in trouble and potentially get your account blocked. However, there are ways to do it, as you can see below:
Using Instagram anonymously
Instagram is made to share details of your life with other people, but this sharing can go too far. Sometimes, for lots of different reasons, it’s necessary to protect yourself by posting stories anonymously.
By following these steps, you can post anonymous stories without breaking any of Instagram’s rules. So no matter what you choose to share, you can do it safely without revealing your identity.
