How to avoid unwanted friend requests on Facebook

Facebook and other social media websites have taken an integral part in our lives. While using such websites are quite fun and most of us love to do it at a different level, we often experience few annoying problems with them. Surge of unwanted friend requests in Facebook is one such embarrassing and irritating experience, which we all want to avoid and get rid of.

If the friend requests are from some totally unknown person, then it is not that a big problem and we can always ignore and turn down them. But what if that person is not totally a stranger, but someone you know a little bit though cannot be regarded as friends. How to handle these requests in Facebook is a big question. Things get even worse if you meet these people at some common places every now and then, but does not know him well enough to accept a friend request on Facebook. That will be not a very sensible thing to do as well, whether that person seems nice or not.

It is never wise to accept friend requests from persons who are not very well known to you. You will find yourself in similar situations with these types of persons from distant past (like school friends) whom you have acquaintances, but never treated as friends.

Now what to do? After receiving such requests there are two main options available. One is to reject the request. Always do it politely. That will save you from unnecessary misunderstandings. Another option is to ignore the request so that it will remain in your timeline as pending. But, if you feel these two options will not do and you have to accept the request, you can keep that person in the restricted list after accepting the request.

What is the restricted list? The persons in your restricted list can only see your posts which you marked as public. In that way, though that person is on your friend list, he or she will not be able to see any of your posts meant for your friend list only. In other words, including them in your friend list does not make any difference. They are still like public viewers, i.e. persons outside your friend list.

Now, how to put someone on the restricted list? All you have to do is to go to that person’s profile and select the add to list option from the friends drop down menu and choose restricted. You are done. This person will now only see your public posts and not the posts meant for your friends. Hope this will be helpful and is an enjoyable read.