Do you also, like me, spend half of your day scrolling through the never ending Instagram explore page? Isn’t it fascinating finding fresh content every time you pull down & refresh the Instagram explore page? I know right! Just as much frustrating is one of those infrequent moments when the Instagram explore page won’t load or won’t work. But why?
During all the years of its existence, I believe, the user engagement on Instagram was propelled the most by this insanely addictive Instagram Explore page. Not only do users get to see fresh categorised content, but they are also served with a custom user centric feed of an explore page which is populated with all the content that a particular user is most likely to engage with. This AI generated content feed is so addictive that it is unbearably easy for a person to get lost in the content. Scrolling indefinitely and losing all sense of time is something very common.
Now one can imagine the plight of a user who might be deeply engrossed in one such scrolling session and suddenly the explore page stops working. Or imagine a scenario where you’ve completed all your work and are just about to begin a self satisfying scrolling session only to find the Instagram explore page not loading? What are we going to do? How are we going to feel about that? Rage, frustration are the only feelings that could surface on a user’s face.
Table of Contents
Why Instagram Explore Feed Not Working/Loading?
There could be multiple reasons responsible for such bizarre behaviour of the Instagram explore feed. Let me start by listing some of the common ones.
Instagram Is Down
As funny as it sounds, Instagram outage occurrences are more frequent than ever. During these outages, Instagram DMs cease to respond. Instagram feed fails to load as users are denied data from Instagram. Similarly, the Instagram search page stop working. Hence, this could very well and most commonly known reason due for the search feed to go down.
Bad Internet Connection
No one likes to hear this one. Other apps are working just fine, so why won’t Instagram work? Well, a bad internet connection can do weird stuff like that. Switch between the WiFi or mobile internet or try to connect to someone else’s hotspot and see if the issue still persists.
Technical Glitch In Your Phone
Smartphones have achieved a feat like never before but at the end of the day these are all technical devices. They are vulnerable to minor technical glitches which can lead to issues like these. One could simply shut down the Instagram app, try clearing the cache files and restart again. Alternatively, users can also try restarting their phones to clean any such stuck glitch.
Bug In The Instagram App
While this is a very rare case, it is not impossible. Sometimes, due to various reasons, apps get corrupted and start misbehaving or fail to perform certain functions they are supposed to. In such case, the most effective way to deal is to reinstall the Instagram app.
Clear The Search History
I personally believe, this has little to do with the Explore Search Feed of Instagram. Although, I’m only a human and why should you leave any stone unturned in your attempt to have a peaceful scrolling session on Instagram. So there you go, here’s how to clean search history on Instagram.
- Open Instagram app
- Go to your profile section
- Tap on the Settings Icon on top right
- Reach for the Security option
- Go to the “Search History”
- Tap on “Clear History”
The above steps will reset the explore feed history. For those who are not aware, Instagram keeps a deep track of posts & videos that you open and like under the Search Feed. Using the tracked information and actively learning your interests a more customised feed will be presented to you next time. This cycle keeps going on until you put a full stop to it by clearing the search history.
I guess by now you should be able to trace down the culprit for the search feed nor working issue. If not, I truly apologise but there doesn’t seem to be any sensible reason that it would happen. As a last resort, you could connect to the Instagram Support and maybe their technical team could help you out.
