The world of Instagram is full of many, often complicated social constructs and "rules". One of the most universally followed seems to be the concept of always making sure your number of followers is larger than the number of people you follow. It seems to be an unspoken rule amongst many Instagram users, and yet, there seems to be little reason for it. Maybe it's a status thing, or the proves something to those who stumble across your account. Or maybe it's a silly idea that some random person decided was necessary to follow.
Because think about it. Why is this a thing? What are we proving by following a small number of people? To me it suggests that your Instagram feed is boring, rather than the idea that you have a highly followed account, or are popular online. The less people an account follows, the fewer posts they have on their feed. When you limit the number of people you allow yourself to follow, you limit receiving some of the benefits of social media. You limit the number of people you're able to connect with, the amount of cool and interesting posts you come across, and any potential inspiration or knowledge you could receive from accounts.
To me, one of the best parts of Instagram is getting to follow people and accounts that inspire, intrigue, educate, and encourage me, while also getting to be updated on the lives of people that are important to me. But if we decide to follow this meaningless construct of making sure we don't follow too many people, then we are not opening ourselves up to these benefits, and instead trying to make sure we project this image of being too cool to follow others back, or too important to follow more than a handful of accounts.
