The internet is full of trolls and people who have seemingly nothing better to do than to leave offensive comments on publicly-posted social media posts. This has become such a huge problem that many big-name celebrities have actually been bullied off social media platforms where they’d rather close their social media accounts rather than deal with these comments.

This doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t use social media, but rather if you do use it, it might be a better idea to make it a private profile so that only people you know and trust can see your posts, thus preventing your posts from being abused by random strangers online.

If you use Twitter, making your profile private is quick and easy and here’s how you can do it on both mobile and on your computer.

Making your Twitter profile private on your computer

  1. Go to Twitter and log into your account
  2. Click More on the sidebar on the left
  3. Click Settings and privacy
  4. Select Your account > Account information
  5. Click Protected Tweets
  6. Check the box under Protect your Tweets

Making your Twitter profile private on your phone

  1. Launch the Twitter app on your phone and log into your account
  2. Tap your profile photo at the top left corner
  3. Select Settings and privacy
  4. Select Privacy and safety
  5. Toggle on Protect your Tweets

Now that your Twitter account has been made private, it means that your tweets will no longer be visible to the public. Your tweets will now only be visible to people who already follow you, and moving forwards, people who want to follow you will have to send you a request that you can choose to approve or deny.

However, as Twitter notes, it is possible that your tweets can still be captured via screenshot and shared publicly by someone else, so it’s not exactly the most perfect scenario, but it should still be good enough if you’d rather avoid having random strangers on the internet see and comment on your tweets.

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