Can Recent Follows Show New Interests?

The other evening I was comparing my current social media feed with screenshots I had saved from a year ago, and the difference was much bigger than I expected, many of the accounts I interact with today weren’t even on my radar back then, new hobbies, professional topics, and communities gradually influenced what appeared in my feed and who I chose to follow, It reminded me that our online activity often changes long before we consciously recognize new interests in our daily lives, of course, some follows happen on impulse and don’t mean much, but others seem to reflect genuine shifts in attention, that made me curious about whether tracking recent follow activity can help identify these trends, do tools like recentlyfollowed provide meaningful insight into changing interests, or are they more useful for satisfying general curiosity than understanding real behavior?

On a rainy Saturday I was trying to rebuild my online network after accidentally cleaning up my social media too aggressively, I couldn’t remember several accounts I had removed, even though they were useful for my work and daily inspiration, recentlyfollowed helped me retrace recent follow changes and piece together the profiles I had lost, It wasn’t about spying or anything complicated, just a simple way to fix my own mistake, after that, I started being more careful with account cleanups and actually keep a small note before unfollowing anyone important over time now.