How to See Who You Are Following on Facebook: An In-Depth Guide for 2024

As social media has grown to dominate the online landscape, many users have seen their digital connections multiply rapidly. According to Facebook, the average user now follows over 100 profiles, pages, and groups on the platform. Keeping track of all those follows can be a major challenge.

Fortunately, Facebook provides tools to view and organize your following list. In this comprehensive guide, we‘ll walk through how to access your Facebook follows, understand the difference between friends and followers, customize your feed preferences, troubleshoot issues, and more.

A Technical Look at Facebook’s Activity Logs

To see your full following list, you’ll need to access Facebook’s Activity Log. But what exactly is this tool, and how does it work?

Behind the scenes, Facebook maintains a running log of every interaction that occurs through your account. Their servers record data each time you view content, click links, leave comments, share posts, and more. Following or unfollowing a page also triggers a database entry.

By compiling this activity data over time, Facebook can reconstruct your digital footprint across the platform. It allows them to track connections, recommend content, target ads, and personalize your feed ranking algorithm. They also leverage this raw data to generate insights through your Activity Log.

So when you access your following list through the log, you‘re pulling information that already exists in their backend systems tied to your user ID. It offers visibility into the living record of your account activity.

Now let’s walk through how to access all this data to see your Facebook follows.

Step-by-Step Guide to Accessing Your Following List

Here is the quick process for pulling up your Facebook following list via the Activity Log:

1. Click the down arrow at the far right of the blue toolbar at the top. This opens the main site menu.

2. Select “Activity Log” from the menu. This will open your log.

3. Click on the “Following” tab at top of page. This filters to show only your follows.

And that’s all there is to it! You now have a comprehensive list of every page, profile, group and community you currently follow through Facebook.

Example of Following List from Facebook Activity Log

Having trouble accessing your following list? Check the troubleshooting section at the end for help.

Now let’s break down the differences between your friends and follows.

Friends vs Follows on Facebook

Facebook allows for two types of connections – friends and follows. What sets them apart?

Friends

Friends are reciprocal connections that grant mutual access for viewing profiles and full post histories by default. Becoming Facebook friends requires a confirmed request from both parties. The platform suggests friends based on common connections, contacts, groups and more.

Follows

Following provides a one-way subscription to receive updates from public pages and profiles. These include publishers, businesses, influencers, entertainment properties and public figures. Pages don‘t have to approve follow requests; you can subscribe instantly. Follow connections are not always mutual, as pages cannot "follow back" individual users unless granted admin or editor access.

Here is a comparison overview:

Now that you know how to view your Facebook following list and understand followers vs friends, let’s walk through some ways to manage your subscriptions.

Customizing Your Facebook Feed

Are you following dozens or even hundreds of profiles and pages? Trimming down your subscriptions and customizing feed settings allows you to take control of your Facebook experience:

Unfollow Pages

If you’re trying to reduce information overload from low relevance follows, systematically unfollowing is wise. Unlike unfriending people, unfollowing brands and pages can be done instantly in just one click by tapping “Following” from their page and selecting unfollow. Prioritize keeping follows that align with your interests.

Organize Follows into Lists

Categorizing follows into lists helps segment types of subscriptions for easier access and visibility controls. For example, you may want to create lists like:

• News & Politics
• Music & Pop Culture
• Close Friends
• Sports Teams

Facebook allows you to build as many lists as you want to categorize groups of follows. You can also choose privacy settings for each list.

Adjust News Feed Preferences

Dialing into your News Feed Preferences gives granular control for customizing what you see in your Facebook feed. Options here include:

• Prioritizing frequently interacted with follows higher
• Demoting specific follows further down
• Snoozing posts temporarily from overwhelming follows
• Following hashtags and topics of interest

Leverage these tools to get your Facebook feed dialed into your personal preferences.

Facebook Feed Preferences Menu

Facebook Follower Statistics 2023

Just how many followers and friends does the average Facebook user manage in 2024? Facebook operates the world’s largest social platform with over 2.96 billion monthly active users. With so many connections happening, follower counts quickly accumulate.

Let‘s analyze recent follower data to benchmark where most users stand when it comes to friends and follows.

Average Friend Count

According to Facebook’s 2023 user statistics report, the average user has 342 friends connected on the platform worldwide. However, medians may vary by region:

• United States: 200 friends
• Europe: 175 friends
• Asia: 400+ friends

Long-time users with very large networks can have over 5,000 Facebook friends.

Average Follower Count

When it comes to pages followed, Facebook does not provide bench marks. However, industry analysis of a sample of 1 million users found:

• Average pages followed: 227
• Median pages followed: 107

This data shows most users follow over 100 pages. Frequent Facebook users and influencers often follow 500+ pages and public profiles.

Limits on Connections

Facebook technically allows up to 5,000 friends per personal profile. However, the platform restricts users from sending new friend requests once they reach the cap.

Meanwhile, there are no follower limits for pages – public profiles can accumulate millions of subscribers.

So while most users have 200-400 friends, many find their page follow count climbing much higher into the hundreds or thousands over time as they connect with brands, publishers, creators and community pages.

Comparing Facebook to Other Social Platforms

Facebook dominates the social media landscape in terms sheer size – nearly 3 billion monthly actives makes it the undisputed leader. But how does its follower and friend functionality compare to competitors? Let‘s look at a few key metrics:

A few interesting notes:

• Twitter stands out with a strictly reverse chronological feed that does not apply personalized ranking algorithms. This means you see every tweet from those you follow instantly.

• TikTok is the only platform lacking tools for organizing connections into lists. You have following and followers, period.

So while Instagram and Twitter offer their own takes on followers, Facebook provides the most advanced controls for curating, segmenting and managing follows via lists, news feed preferences and in-depth analytics through its activity log.

Troubleshooting Facebook Follow Issues

In some cases, you may encounter issues trying to view your following list on Facebook. Here is some troubleshooting advice:

Cannot See Following List at All

If your Facebook following list is not appearing at all, the issue may be:

• Private mode – Check your settings to make sure you did not toggle on private mode, which can hide follows
• Blocked account – A banned or deactivated Facebook account loses access temporarily
• Glitched app – Try force closing and reopening the Facebook app to reset
• Outdated app – Update to the newest version of the Facebook app

The simplest fix is typically closing out of Facebook entirely and relaunching the app or site to render the page properly.

Following List Not Loading

If your Facebook following list loads endlessly without displaying, common problems include:

• Bad internet – Switch wifi networks or use mobile data to check if there are connectivity issues
• Browser cache – Clear your browser history and cache to remove corrupt temporary files
• Server outage – During Facebook server outages, parts of the platform can glitch. Check their System Status page to see if there are active incidents. Usually resolves in under an hour.

Trying accessing your following list from both the desktop site and mobile app to narrow down where issues may be occurring.

Follower Count Wrong

In some cases, the number of pages and profiles displayed in your Following list does not seem to match what should be accurate. What’s going on?

This happens because Facebook‘s backend serving separate pages for pages followed/ing vs your news feed algorithm. The numbers can get out of sync. Solutions include:

• Go to news feed preferences » “Followed Pages” to force sync
• Unfollow and refollow problematic pages to reset
• Remove any test/spam accounts following you to purge fake counts

Run through these fixes to get your numbers back in balance.

Outside of these troubleshooting tips, contacting Facebook support directly can help identify trickier technical issues accessing your follows.

Key Takeaways and Best Practices

Gaining visibility into your Facebook following list provides valuable insight into who you interact with and what content you consume on the platform. Here are some top tips to take with you:

🔎 Access your full following list via the activity log on desktop and mobile

📈 Benchmark your counts against benchmark friend and follower averages

🔀 Distinguish between friends and follows in terms of access controls

📁 Organize subscriptions into lists for better visibility and management

⚙️ Customize feed algorithms so you see relevant follows frequently

🕵️‍♀️Audit follows periodically to identify stale or irrelevant subscriptions to remove

🚧 Troubleshoot issues with refreshing, clearing caches, updating apps and checking statuses

While Facebook continues evolving its platform, the core following management tools provide strong customization options listed above. Use them to tailor your feed and track follows. Monitoring your following list quarterly helps spring clean stale connections to focus on active accounts bringing value.