Lafayette, LA (KPEL News) – Facebook users have been hearing chirps every time they swipe through their newsfeeds. We’ve become accustomed to hearing the chirping when we pull down the screen to refresh and see what our Louisiana friends are up to.

Over the weekend, I was scrolling through and nearly every time I touched the screen, CHIRP! What the…?!? I closed the app and reopened it. CHIRP! Thinking my entire phone was freaking out, I powered it off and rebooted it. CHIRP!

I took it as a sign, at the time, that I shouldn’t be on social media. Honestly, I did have more important matters to attend to.

The next morning, I logged on and the chirping continued. ANNOYING!

I frustratingly kept scrolling, cursing the little bird that had become the bane of my Facebook existence, sure it was user error. Until I ran across a post by a member of my social media community that offered instructions about how to make it stop.

It worked!

Being the curious sort, I had to find out why. Why in the world would Facebook, the company that makes billions off of us mindlessly scrolling and sharing more information about our personal lives than we should, feel it was important to annoy us while cashing in.

In short, to enhance the Facebook experience.

According to Dataconomy, Meta, Facebook’s parent company, decided that we needed to have a more engaging, interesting experience and that adding a “subtle sound” would auditory enhancement.

Dataconomy writes:

These changes can also serve as attention-grabbing elements, encouraging users to stay active and spend more time on the app. Overall, Facebook is constantly evolving to meet its users’ changing preferences and expectations, and introducing sounds is just one way they’re doing that.

It may just be my opinion, but EPIC FAIL!

The majority of us have turned off all sound when it comes to our handheld devices. Phones don’t ring or ding, and the videos we see are muted.

Whoever thought adding more sound, and an annoying one at that, was a good idea.

The good news is that the platform offers a fix if you want to just make it stop, and it’s pretty easy.

1- Open the app.

2- Tap on the “hamburger” menu, the three horizontal lines, that are at the bottom right corner of the screen. They may be on your profile pic and hard to see.

3- Scroll through until you get to “Settings & Privacy.” Tap it.

4- Go to “Settings.”

5- Tap “Media.”

6- Turn that toggle switch off next to “Sounds- In-App Sound.”

Go forth and live chirp free!