As is increasingly becoming the case, social media users are stating their preferred pronouns in their profile. This is for a number of reasons, with ease of communication and show of solidarity and inclusivity chief among them.
Instagram has announced in a tweet that it will be officially introducing an entry field in its bio section to allow users to share their preferred pronoun, with the new option currently "available in a few countries, with plans for more".
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Add pronouns to your profile ✨The new field is available in a few countries, with plans for more. pic.twitter.com/02HNSqc04RMay 11, 2021
This means that users will be able to save space in their bio write-up that they otherwise would have given to identifying their pronoun. Instead, the pronoun will appear next to a user's name in their Instagram profile.
Users are able to add up to four pronouns, and decide whether they'd like to share these with 'followers only' – a nice privacy consideration for those that would prefer not to have this detail public.
When you begin typing a pronoun, a list of matches will appear beneath it and you're required to select from this list. This means that you won't be able to type just any text into the box, but will have to choose from the available list (we expect the selection will likely expand with user feedback, but it currently seems rather comprehensive).
As mentioned, this feature is already available in 'a few countries' (it was available to this author in Australia at the time of writing) and will be rolling out to more in the future, so if you don't have access to it, update your app and see if it's landed. If it hasn't, we don't expect you'll be waiting too long.
