Instagram head Adam Mosseri announced that it will be bringing back the chronological feed option next year. This feature was reported to be in the works for months, with Instagram planning to launch it in 2022.

At a Senate hearing on Instagram and teen safety, Mosseri said that he supports “giving people the option to have a chronological feed.” He added that Instagram is actively working on a version of its feed which will allow users to sort content chronologically. Currently, posts are ranked by the platform’s algorithm.

Instagram’s addictive nature was one of the topics that was repeatedly brought up at the hearing. One of the biggest culprits that fuels this addiction, especially when it comes to impressionable teens and kids, is its algorithmic feed. Congress has even proposed a bill to regulate “malicious” algorithms to control the ranking systems employed by social media platforms.

When Instagram first launched in 2010, it displayed a chronological feed. But in 2016, it switched to an algorithm-based feed, much to the chagrin of the users. And people have been complaining about it ever since. Mosseri, in a blog post in June, defended the algorithmic feed by saying that showing the newest posts first made it “impossible for most people to see everything, let alone all the posts they cared about.” He even added that it caused people to miss “70% of all their posts in Feed.”

However, six months later, he had to change his tune, owing to pressure from Congress. Today, Instagram officially announced that it’s bringing back its chronological feed. Additionally, it will also add a “favorites” feed.

We want people to have meaningful control over their experience. We’ve been experimenting with Favorites, a way for you to decide whose posts you want to see higher up, and we’re working on another option to see posts from people you follow in chronological order.

— Instagram Comms (@InstagramComms) December 8, 2021

Instagram’s proclamation that it has been working “for months” on reverting to the chronological feed just doesn’t sit right. This isn’t a new feature, and has already existed when the app was first released. The social media platform is most likely reinstating it to save face but ultimately, what matters is that everybody will soon be able to view content in the order that they’re posted.

What do you think of Instagram finally bringing back its chronological feed? Let us know in the comments.