After Facebook's recent changes, here's how to still see your favorite pages

In a Facebook post last Thursday, co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg revealed changes to the social network's News Feed that aims to bring back the social aspect of the network. According to community feedback, users were seeing an overwhelming amount of business, media and brands taking over their News Feed, which were crowding out posts from the people they cared about.

“Video and other public content have exploded on Facebook in the past couple of years,” Zuckerberg wrote. “Since there's more public content than posts from your friends and family, the balance of what's in News Feed has shifted away from the most important thing Facebook can do - help us connect with each other.”

Zuckerberg stated the company's intent to bring personal interaction back to Facebook, ensuring that users see more of their friends' posts and less content from brands, media and other groups that utilize Facebook pages. While this will make for a more enjoyable social experience on Facebook, one of the drawbacks of this change is that many of the businesses, brands or media that users want to follow will not be visible as often. For instance, if you follow a public figure and enjoy seeing their posts, this new change will hide most of their updates.

This change will also include how you read news. According to a 2016 study by NiemanLab, nearly 50 percent of adults in the United States receive their news from Facebook. This means that the recent update will affect almost half of the nation, who will be less informed on issues they care about, from politics to things that are happening in their own community.

If you would like to still receive updates on local news, or on any other business, brand or media you follow on Facebook, there is a simple fix to ensure this happens.

Here are the steps to follow:

How to customize your News Feed from your desktop computer:

1. Click the arrow on the top right-hand side of your Facebook toolbar.

2. Click “News Feed Preferences.” From here, you can see several preferences on how to control what shows up on your Nes Feed.

3. Click “Prioritize who to see first.”

4. Choose any pages or profiles you'd prefer to see at the top of your News Feed anytime you log in.

You can also do this when you are on the specific page you wish to see more posts from. Just above the pages posts, click the arrow next to “Following,” then click “See First.”

Another option under the “Following” tab is to click “On” for notifications. This will notify you any time this page posts an update.

How to customize your News Feed from our mobile device:

1. Click the three horizontal lines in the bottom right hand corner of your Facebook page.

2. Scroll down until you see “Settings,” and click it.

3. Click “News Feed Preferences.” From here, you can see several preferences on how to control what shows up on your News Feed.

3. Click “Prioritize who to see first.”

4. Choose any pages or profiles you'd prefer to see at the top of your News Feed anytime you log in.

This is also possible when visiting a specific page on your mobile device. Here are the steps:

1. Click “Following” on the page you wish to see more updates from, and it will take you to “Your Subscriptions.”

2. Change News Feed preferences to “See First.”

3. If you wish to be notified when this page updates, choose “Get Notifications.”

Follow the Press Democrat on Facebook at facebook.com/pressdemocrat.