Being a digital marketing and IT expert, the social media limits are essential nowadays. As, Social media is a great way to stay connected with friends and family, but there are some limitations that users should be aware of.
While they can be great for staying connected with friends and family, there are also many potential dangers.
This article covers some of the more common social media community or user limitations, such as those based on community guidelines, expert answers, and authentic sources.
Also, my personal experience provides a well-rounded perspective. Being an IT grad with Digital Marketing and SEO Expertise, I found Social Media limits, especially character limits, to the beauty of networking platforms.
These limits help the users or marketers to utilize their creative skills in a fair and better way. This article covers the collective information based on the community guidelines, expert answers, authentic sources, and my personal experience as well.
Instagram Limits
The Maximum Instagram limits are rules and restrictions to prevent spam actions.
These restrictions maintain the community standards and balance the user’s well-being. Social media platforms are frequently changing their algorithms.
It became hard for a normal user to estimate the actual or ideal limit. Each social network has implemented its rules and limits.
Rules are definitive power, whiles limits work as a boundary wall with a certain level of action.
According to Datareportal Instagram Statistics and Trend published on 11th May 2022, Instagram has a number of 1.452 billion users as of April 2022.
Initially, it had fewer limitations, but the Facebook (now Meta, since October 28, 2021) acquisition put a bunch of limitations.
These user limitation rates are the result of the Facebook community and are followed as per Facebook’s Standards.
Instagram Age Limit
The minimum age limit for the creation of an Instagram account is 13 years. The age restriction is a way to protect the child’s physical and mental health.
Profiles under 13 years of age are created and maintained by their parents. Any user aged between 13 and 17 years can have a profile but only with consent from the parents.
Instagram Following Limits
According to Instagram’s official community guideline, to help fight spam on Instagram, the maximum number of people you can follow is 7,500.
If you try to follow more than this amount of people, you’ll get an error message telling you there is a limit to the number of people you can follow.
This restriction was put in place to ensure that your feed remains authentic and relevant.
Instagram Follow/Unfollow Limits
For me, following and unfollowing people is unethical, immature and a rough sign to play with the emotions of users.
The maximum number of follows and unfollows that a user can do on Instagram per day is dependent upon the account’s standing.
This is something that has been identified by social media automation tool providers that have become famous for their services.
Profiles that are one week old can perform 10-15 actions per hour. Likewise, a four-week-old profile can follow 600 users per day and unfollow another 600 users.
The recommended Instagram limits for an account that is mature enough to avoid getting blocked are: do not follow or unfollow more than 30 accounts per hour; this works out to 720 accounts in a day.
Instagram Mention/Tag limits
Instagram’s official help recommends that a user can tag up to 20 accounts in every post and story, and 5 users in a comment by mentioning them with “@mention.”
Mentioned users get notified in the activity tab and tagged posts as well. Instagram recommends tagging and mentioning only known people.
Hence, avoid counting your profile as spam tag followers only.
Instagram Bio Characters Limit
As mentioned above, the character limit for a user profile or bio on Instagram is 150 characters.
However, this doesn’t mean that you can use exactly 150 letters in your bio.
Instead, try to use around 120-130 characters so that your followers can easily read and digest the information in your bio.
Instagram Post Caption Characters Limit
If you’re looking to add more context to your Instagram posts, you’re in luck – the caption limit is a whopping 2,200 characters.
That’s more than enough space to get your point across. Just keep in mind that captions are truncated at 125 characters when they’re displayed on the app.
Instagram Username Character Limits
An Instagram username or handle is limited to 30 characters long.
Furthermore, shorter usernames are considered more catchy in contrast to the long username. Users are confined to changing the username once in 14 days.
Instagram Profile Name Characters limits
Profile names on Instagram are limited to 30 characters.
You can request a change to your profile name once per week.
Instagram Direct Message DM Characters Limits
As of now, the maximum amount of characters you can use in an Instagram direct message is 1000 characters, which includes spaces.
Although this is shorter in comparison to other social media sites, it is still a decent number for the average user.
If you need to exceed the limit, you can always break your message up into multiple parts.
Instagram Ask Question Character Limits
A user asks a question by sharing a predefined question and answer box in the statute or story.
The character limits for the story asking questions are limited to 66 characters.
Instagram Quiz Character Limits
The character size for a quiz in the story is restricted to 53 characters
Image Alt Character Limit
Alt Text (Alternative Text Tags) or ALT Tag is a feature that allows you to add alternative text to an image.
Instagram photos can have up to 22000 characters in their Alt text. This is the same amount as the caption or description.
Hashtag (#) is used to add and identify the content related to a particular topic.
The maximum number of hashtags on Instagram is up to 30 Hashtags per post. However, the ideal length is 5 – 10 hashtags.
IGTV time and size limit
Instagram users can upload 1 – 60 minute long videos to IGTV profiles, from the web.
However, a smartphone user is limited to uploading up to 15 minutes long videos.
Instagram Stories post limit
Instagram story is one of the most used features on Instagram.
It lets users upload photos and videos to their followers, which will disappear from the list after 24 hours.
There is no defined limit for sharing or uploading user stories, ideally, an Instagram user can post up to 100 stories per day.
Instagram Watch Stories limit:
Hurrah! An Instagram user can watch unlimited stories.
Watching and replying to stories is a great way to reach your audience.
Instagram Likes Per day limit:
Instagram limits for like depends on the profile life. If you are an active user with no spammy mark, you are allowed to like 350 posts for an hour.
Usually, The maximum like limit for a user with a 5-6 week old can perform 1000 likes in a day.
Instagram Reels Limits:
Instagram Reels is a fantastic feature to introduce in August 2020, where users are limited to create 15 seconds short fun and enjoying videos.
Live/Live Room Limits: Instagram has maximized the live streaming limit from 60 minutes to 4 hours.
On March 1, 2021, Instagram has introduced a new feature namely “LIVE ROOMS”, by which Instagram users can live up to four people by creating a live room.
Recently Deleted Limit: As announced by Instagram on February 2, 2021, Your deleted Photos, videos, reels, IGTV videos, and stories will move to the Recently deleted folder. The recently deleted feature will hold your deleted items for 30 days. So you don’t have to worry about your content even after deleting it.
Facebook Limits
Facebook, as we all know, is one of the most widely used social media services with 2.93 billion monthly active users and 1.96 billion daily visiting users, as of April 2022.
For me, Facebook is the pioneer of Social Media Limits.
It has been around since 2004 when Mark Zuckerberg started the website in his Harvard dorm.
Now, this is a classic example of how a simple idea can turn into something incredibly successful.
Facebook started off offering the typical social networking services: sharing statuses and images updating friends about your activities, etc., and nowadays, it offers much more than that (as you will probably agree).
Facebook Characters limit
According to Facebook’s community guidelines, Facebook’s character limit for posts is 63,206 characters and 8,000 characters for comments.
Messages are limited to 20,000 characters per message, with a group messaging of up to 250 users or members.
This means a user can share half of his professional report or a complete dissertation.
Whereas the character limit for the page description is 255 characters.
Facebook has a limit on the number of characters that can be used in a profile’s biography or bio.
Please remember that the ideal length for all Facebook posts, comments, messages, and descriptions is possible the shortest number of characters.
Facebook Friend Limits
A Facebook user is bound to have 5000 confirmed friends on their profile and can accept up to 1000 friend requests in a queue.
However, the ideal limit for friend request limits per day is sending up to 20 friend requests at a time.
Facebook Video Limits
Facebook video is a great way to share your recorded clips with the world.
Facebook allows its users to share videos that are up to 240 minutes long, with a maximum size of 4 GB.
Whereas, the duration of the Facebook live stream is limited to up to 8 hours.
Similarly, the video length for a Facebook story is about 5 – 20 seconds.
Post Tag/Mention Limit: Facebook users can tag or mention up to 50 profiles in a post.
Group Joining Limit: A single Facebook profile is restricted to joining 6000 groups
Page Like Limit: A user can like up to 5000 pages.
Event Invitation Limit: A user can invite a maximum of 500 users to an event.
Message Recipient Limit: Facebook has limited the number of message recipients on the web is up to 150 profiles at once.
Twitter Characters and other Limits
Direct Messages Characters limit: A Twitter user can send 100 messages per day. The message is subject to the followers only.
Tweets limits: Twitter users are allowed to post 2400 tweets per day.
Follow limit: A normal Twitter profile can follow 400 profiles per day while a verified account extended to follow about 1000 accounts.
Profile Following limit: A Twitter user can follow up to 5000 profiles.
Tweet Characters limit: A single tweet is extended from 140 characters to 280 characters.
Direct Message Characters limit: A single message is finite to 10000 characters
Profile Email Change Limit: Twitter accounts can change their 04 times per hour.
Profile Name Characters Limit: Twitter Profile name is finite up to 20 characters.
WhatsApp Limitations
Inactive Account Deletion: A WhatsApp user who remains inactive for 120 Days will be deleted.
Name character limit: A person can define his name within 20 characters.
About/Description Character limit: Surprisingly, the WhatsApp profile description is set to 139 characters. It seems a completely odd value.
Status Character Update Limit: WhatsApp status is limited to 700 characters.
Story/status Video Length Limit: WhatsApp allowed users to share a 30 seconds video on their status.
Maximum File Size Limit (photos, videos, or voice messages): A file of up to 16 MB can be shared.
Message Forwarding limit: WhatsApp has a restricted message forwarding limit of up to 5 people.
Group Voice/video call limit: A person can call up to 8 participants for a voice or video call.
Group Member Limit: A group is confined to up to 250 Participants.
Group Description Character Limit: WhatsApp has restricted the group description character limit to 500 characters.
Rooms Participant Limit: WhatsApp room participants are limited to 50 participants.
Broadcast limit: Message can be broadcasted to up to 256 members. However, to reduce spam, the message will be received only by those participants who have saved the sender number in their contact list.
Quick Reply Character limits: A quick reply pop-up appears on the top-notch or in the center of the screen. WhatsApp quick replies are limited to 50 characters.
TikTok Characters and other Limit
Tiktok Minimum Age Limit:
According to the TikTok Guardians Guide for parents, The age requirement to create a TikTok account a user must be 13 years old. In case a user is under 13 years, he will be placed at Younger User Experience, which has some additional privacy features and protections.
Tiktok Maximum Video Length Limit
Since February 2022, TikTok has increased the maximum length of video from 6 to 10 minutes on its app. The change, which will roll out globally over the next few weeks, follows months of testing. however, prior to this update in the year 2021, a TikTok influencer was allowed to share 60 seconds video if it has been recorded out of TikTok and up to 15 seconds directly from the app.
TikTok Profile Bio Description limits
The maximum limit for a TikTok profile Bio is 80 characters to communicate with the world about their content expertise.
TikTok username characters limit:
A TikTok’s profile name is limited to 30 characters. While a TikTok user’s name is restricted to a maximum of 24 characters. Further, a TikTok username can be changed after one month.
TikTok Maximum Comments Character limit:
A TikToker can post, hashtag, and express his feelings for a particular video within a chunk of 150 characters.
TikTok Likes and follows per-day limits:
The safe zone for TikTok users is not to like more than 500 videos and 200 follows in a day a
Final thoughts about Social Media Limits
These limits encourage members to be more creative and also restrain the automation tools. No matter how long is your profile old? Your impatience and rapid activity can be the cause of the shadow-banning. If you’re using an automation tool, you must follow these social media limits and use them wisely. However, the recommended method to get famous on social media is friendly advertising with your niche.
It’s your time to tell a story about Social media limitations if ever happened to you.