How to filter updates on your Facebook page

The explosive growth of Facebook means you might have trouble keeping up with friends and relatives when you look at your news feed. You could “unfriend” people who update too often or whose updates you don’t want to read, but that might offend them. Creating a friend list will make sure you see only the updates you want when you log into the site.

1. Log into your Facebook account and click “Create” at the bottom of the sidebar on the top left side of the page. Give your list a name such as “Real friends” or “People I care about.”

2. Add people to your list by clicking on their profile pictures or by typing their name into the search field. Add only the people you’re really interested in keeping up with.

3. Once you’ve selected all your friends for this list, click “Create List.”

4. A link to your new list will be displayed at the bottom of the sidebar on the upper left side of the page. Click on the link to the list and drag it to the top of the sidebar, above the link to “News Feed.” Now every time you log into Facebook, you will see a news feed of only the people on your list (as opposed to the default news feed of all friends).

5. There are several ways to add or remove people from your list. Click the pencil next to the name of your list in the sidebar, or go to your list of friends and click the arrow next to someone’s name. When you approve a friend request, you can add that person to your new list by clicking the arrow next to “Add to list” before you click “confirm.”

You can create multiple lists. Your friends will not know if they’re on a list.