How Instagram Close Friends is actually used

A 500-person survey and 20 interviews show how a seemingly simple privacy feature creates social meaning and confusion

What does it mean when someone adds you to their Close Friends (on @instagram ) ? For @mozilla , I surveyed 500 instagram users and interviewed 20 to understand how the feature is being used and how confusion sometimes sets it.
Ranked #25 on backlist 2026-05-15 (15 May 2026 UTC) · by (ruby justice thelot) ·

How it ranks: Backlist reads my Twitter/X timeline, scores every tweet for substance with an LLM rubric (not engagement), and publishes the daily top picks with a one-line takeaway. Curated by Surya Dantuluri.