The Person-With-a-Plus Icon on Instagram: What It Does Next to 'Message' and Everywhere Else

It's a small icon, a head-and-shoulders silhouette with a plus sign in the corner, and it sits right next to the Message button on every profile you visit. People tap it expecting to add the person to something. Instead a row of strangers slides out. This post explains why, and what the same icon means in the other two places it shows up.

On Someone Else's Profile: Suggested Accounts

Next to Following (or Follow) and Message, the person-plus button expands a horizontal carousel of profiles Instagram considers similar to the one you're looking at. Tap it again to collapse the row.

Instagram builds that row from a few signals: accounts with overlapping followers, accounts in the same category, and accounts that people who follow this profile also tend to follow. The result is Instagram's answer to "if you like this account, you'll probably like these."

Nothing happens to the account you're viewing when you tap it. They aren't notified, nothing is added to a list, and no follow is sent. The button is purely about showing you more options.

For creators, this button is more interesting from the other side. When someone lands on your profile and taps it, you decide, indirectly, who shows up in that row. Instagram fills it with accounts your followers also follow, so the row is a portrait of your audience overlap. If competitors keep showing up there, that's not an accident; you share followers. Being the account that appears in other people's suggestion rows is one of the quieter ways to grow, and it's driven mostly by how consistent and legible your niche is.

On Your Own Profile: Discover People

The same icon appears near the top of your own profile (its exact placement shifts between app versions; it's usually near the Edit Profile button or in the top toolbar). Here it opens Discover People: a longer list of accounts Instagram suggests for you, including people from your contacts if you've synced them, accounts followed by people you follow, and creators in categories you engage with.

This is the screen Instagram uses to nudge new users into following twenty accounts on day one. For an established account it's rarely useful, except for one thing: the "Contacts" section is a reminder of whether you've allowed contact syncing, which you may want to turn off in Settings if you didn't mean to.

In Notifications: Follows and Follow Requests

In the notifications tab, the person-plus icon marks follow activity.

• Public account: "X started following you," with the icon next to it.
• Private account: a follow request, grouped at the top under "Follow requests," each with Confirm and Delete buttons.

If the number of requests on a private account grows faster than you'd expect, most of them are usually bot accounts probing for a follow-back. Reviewing them in bulk once a week is enough. If you're weighing whether a private or public setup fits you better, the tradeoffs go beyond the follow request queue.

Two Lookalike Icons That Aren't This One

The person-plus is easy to confuse with neighbors:

• Person with a checkmark — you're following this account (shown briefly after you tap Follow, and in some list views).
• Two overlapping people — a Collab post, a group, or the "Friends" tab in Reels, depending on context.
• Plus in a circle — create something new: a post, Story, Reel, or, on your profile picture, a new Story.
• Bell — notification settings for a specific account, found in the Following dropdown.

The rest of the profile row, including the bell, the down arrow on Following, and the icons that only show on business accounts, is covered in the profile icons guide. And for the full inventory across the app, start with the complete Instagram icons reference.

The person-plus button asks a simple question every time you tap it: who else is like this? Instagram's answer is worth reading occasionally, especially on your own profile, where it doubles as a mirror.