How to Delete Facebook and Instagram From Your Life Forever

If I remove my FB account, do I have to worry about someone using my name and photos to set up an account and posting as me?

The fact that articles are written (& presumably read) about how to approach the "difficult" decision to quit social media tells the story of how ridiculous it has all become. "Assess what you might lose"?! LMHO! Just quit! Quit & delete your account! It's just that simple! I quit Facebook last March after over 7 years & have spent all of no time missing it. You'd be surprised how easy it is to walk away & you will lose nothing. You will, however, gain a lot of time & peace of mind. (I am not aware of anything worthwhile that requires a Facebook account & linking other accounts to your Fb account has already been shown to be risky.)

I agree. Eliminate all social media from your life, and get back to living in the world. Read. Walk, notice sights, sounds, smells.

Add to this article: If you are concerned you might be tempted to log back in while waiting for your account to be permanently deleted, there are a plethora of site-blocking apps (many of them free) that will lock you out of social media (and any other sites you nominate) for a specified time. I recommend Self Control, because even if you disable the app or delete it from the computer, it will shut you out until the pre-set time has passed. No self-defeating possible!

Coincidentally did this a few days ago. It’s been making me nuts since I couldn’t help but need to look at the daily wreckage, like passing an accident on the highway. Maybe 2021 I’ll login to check on everyone.

As someone who works in web development, I wish there were more articles like this. Thank you!

Oh joy!! I don't need to...because I never had them to begin with. Seriously, to everyone I love with whom I have spoken about this: I told you so!!! Be like Elsa from Frozen: Let it go!! Live a real life, not a virtual life. Now if I could only convince more of my high school students.

Yes, GET OUT OF FACEBOOK. Waste of a frighteningly huge amount of time across the world. Pretend it doesn't exist--easy enough.

You don’t need to have a temporary waiting period to serendipitously discover which third party sites you have linked to Facebook. Go into settings and look for “Apps”. This will list third party sites and apps for which you have logged in using your Facebook credentials. Systematically visit each and change from logging in via Facebook to logging in via an email using a unique password for that site. A password manager helps. Some sites and apps might only let you log in via Facebook. Dump those.

I can say to this date going back a year that I am mearly social media free I have no Facebook no Instagram all I have is a LinkedIn page but I barely use it- since I'm not in the recruiting field anymore. Everyday now instead of wasting 2 or 3 hours scrolling through and seeing what other people are doing, or checking in on them seeing how they live their lives- I'm out here enjoying my own and I'm much happier.

Facebook was so much better when people posted actual statuses as to what they were doing. Now 90% of my news feed is filled with worthless 'shared' posts. Facebook needs to allow users to check a box allowing them to opt out of shared posts. Many people are asking for the same thing on Google searches, but as of now there is no effective way to do this without blocking all posts from friends. Are you listening Facebook? I seriously doubt it...

I belong to a couple of support groups on Facebook. If not for those, I would be long gone.

AFAIK, this article is an accurate summary of what to do to disentangle oneself from FB. Implicit in it is the recognition that, with or without FB, privacy as people have known it (based on a no longer available physical secrecy) is a dead horse. It is stunningly explicit in this article that FB’ers, whose time, behavior, and relationships are immersed in FB, are borgs.

Many of us use FB to see the pictures and events of out-of-town family, because that's where younger generations connect. I'm connected to my two daughters and their families. I think I have all of ten FB friends, and keep it that way. BUT(!) I have a made-up FB name on my account, and don't connect to anything via FB. Yes, you can create an account with a bogus name. I did. No pics, no details, no nothing. Once you let your family know who you are on FB and "friend" each other, you're done. You're anonymous and hassle-free.

i think i deleted my facebook account over a year ago (i followed prompts in an article such as this one). i'm sure i selected 'delete', not 'deactivate'. and i made sure not to go near the site for 30 days. but after that time had elapsed, i've occasionally gone to facebook and there is always a log in window with my name in it, just waiting for me to re-up. i can't believe i'm actually deleted if this happens....so i just ignore it and hope for the best. do i need to go through the whole process again?

What finally made me delete my Facebook account is listening to NPR and hearing about China using a social credit score to help control their citizens. Enough. Facebook is not fun to use. I don’t trust Facebook with my data. I trust the government even less. The cow may already be out of the barn, but I am not giving Facebook any more of me.

I deleted Facebook last year, after being an avid user, and am so grateful to be done with it. I am far more productive and less distracted. I also notice how nuts the world has become with everyone on social media. One thing I did was announce my departure in a post a few days before I did it, and collected contact information for anyone who wanted to stay in touch.

So here is a glitch. The email address which I used when I joined FB is no longer valid. The company has been bought and name changed and emails changed but even before that I stopped using the service. Silly me. Obviously I should have changed email in FB but did not occur to me. So when I want to delete my account, FB sends a confirmation email to guess where? No longer valid email, that I no longer have, no longer use, no longer exists even. What to do? What to do?

Facebook offers free service to the suckers (us) to get us hooked by connecting us on "social media" to friends and family. Zuckerberg and Company should stick to their original mission. Since the service is "free" then Advertisers (large companies) would pay FB whenever the suckers clicked on their ads. That was FB's original model. But they got greedy and branched out as they got bigger to draw in more suckers world wide. Inevitably some restrictive governments have squashed FB in their countries. FB cannot govern itself without some laws being passed to avoid abuses.

For the life of me I never understood why anyone put faith in Facebook. Even before the discovery of breaches, even before the Russian manipulation, I sensed Facebook had a problem respecting people's privacy, even after they allowed people to decide what and how much is private/public. But even after the news of the Russian hacking, people STILL are addicted. I do remember a life before Facebook. In those days, people actually talked to one another. They interacted in person. People were not so willing to surrender private information like phone numbers and social security numbers to an entity that dictated to them -- not vice versa -- what is private or not. Go ahead and slay the dragon. You will be a lot happier.

The definition of "Irony" -- An article published in the tech section on the New York Times website - providing a step-by-step tutorial on how to delete your Facebook account -- which includes a link at the bottom of the article allowing readers to "share" the article on Facebook...

Great, but the instructions given do not delete your account. It is easier to kick heroin than delete facebook. I barely used it, just looking at a few animal rescues and nature sites. Then I joined a local group protesting a local issue. After a few weeks of acrimony, I deleted my account. Turns out that during that "grace period" when you can change your mind (as if), if you post a comment on any site that uses facebook (like the NYT), it will prevent the deletion. Facebook, in my opinion, is a worse threat to humanity than meth, opioids, and (fill in the blank) combined.

I recently had a friend tell me that she forgot about me because I am not on FB. I know that our friendship is more solid than that and that she just has a busy schedule. Nevertheless, I am still shocked at the ways in which people I know and love are so easily controlled by this corporation. I do have less friends now and I do have to work a bit harder to build professional and social networks but my actual soul is healthier and I know that is all that matters.

This is great, especially all the supportive comments. Next step is for the Times to remove the links to Facebook on its pages.

Step 1: Delete them. Complete.

I deleted my Facebook account after the Cambridge analytical fiasco. Withdrawal lasted about five or six days, but after that I was free! I use my regular email account to communicate with close friends, I mean the really close friends, not the three or 400 I had on Facebook. I have recaptured at least two hours a day as a result. The opportunity cost of using FB is substantial. 90% of the time I spent on that social platform was truly wasted.

I deactivated my FB account in the midst of the 2016 election. I had unfriended friends and family over the ocean of fake news being shared and re-shared on FB. I have never missed it. Now after learning more about the greed and stealth of Zuckerberg and his ilk, and the evidence that FB virtually won the election for Trump, I will delete it for good. Why anyone would continue to use FB is beyond me.

Any advice about deleting a Facebook account if you cannot even log in? I had an account for about 2 minutes in early 2017 which I used passively (no Friending, et al -- primarily to see posts from a *blue* political activist organization to which I belonged). Suddenly, after posting a link to a book review at the website of the NATION publication, I was asked by Facebook to upload a government issued photo ID, which I did not do. I would have liked to delete the account immediately but have not used it since. As you know, it is impossible to contact a person at the Facebook company.

Do I have to sign into Facebook to delete a ghost account it appears to have set up for me? I never signed up with Facebook, but it sends me notifications almost daily. The other day, it sent me a text message. I was horrified that it has my phone number. I started to request a password, so I could log in to delete anything they have on me, but do not want to legitimise this privacy invader. I filled in a support form, but never received a response.

After the 2016 election, I couldn't take it anymore. I was addicted to FB and needed a total and complete detox. I spent 12-hours one day going through every single post I had ever made and removed it. I deleted every single picture I had ever put up. Then I went and unfriended every single person I was connected to, one by one. As a final measure, I changed the password to something totally random and unmemorable, and since the associated email address was one I no longer had, logging back in or retrieving my password became literally impossible. That day was among the most satisfying of my life. I don't miss FB even a little bit and I feel as free as I did when I was young before all this madness happened.

Finally, a NYT article that justifies my subscription, Thank you.

Thank you

I deleted my Facebook account following the 2016 election. I had been on the site since 2004. I thought that it would be difficult and that I would miss it, but I don’t at all. It was one of the best things I ever did.

There are pros and cons with social media as with most things in life. I personally find Facebook an effective platform to communicate helpful and inspiring info. It depends on the user. I do not mind ads targeting my personal tastes. We are bombarded by ads everywhere. At least the ones Facebook sends are custom-tailored to my needs. It’s almost like having a personal shopper. I think Zuckerberg’s ideals and ambitions are well intentioned perhaps somewhat naive but the medium is bigger than him now and harder to control. I think FB needs an army to master algorithms to rid the site of hatred, evil, cruelty, anti-humanity initiatives and terrorism so the platform can be all he intends it to be, a global embrace of high-level humane communication.

I made a conscious decision not to break up with Facebook. However, I keep my data private and I don't post anything I wouldn't want the entire world to know about me. Even the birthdate I use is inaccurate. My posts are for friends only. In addition, about once a month, I check my settings to be sure I am still satisfied with them. I also delete my Google data regularly "from the beginning of time" for the same reasons. I don't use either account to log into other accounts. I use a password manager that generates unique long nonsensical passwords.

This year’s “Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now” by Jaron Lanier makes a concise, persuasive case.

Thanks for this article. I’ve been thinking about deleting Facebook for weeks. My love of Pinterest was the only thing holding me back.

I still value Facebook more than I worry about privacy issues. A couple of reasons: first, I've always been cautious about giving FB information about myself, so what it knows is kind of abstract, plus it knows about all my travels (which probably makes me harder to put into some neat bucket.) I have carefully avoided linking it with my Smartphone! (No Whatsapp, Messenger or "password recovery") But more importantly, what Big Data has on us is much more extensive than anything FB knows! This data is hidden from us, but available to hackers and any advertisers who want to pay for it. Whatever governments have on us will eventually be hacked, if it hasn't been already. So deleting my Facebook account is too trivial to bother with. At any rate, I keep up with relatives (some I've never met, some who live in the country my grandfather came from), old classmates, people I've met while traveling, local friends, etc. There are some Facebook groups that offer interesting, tiny contacts with people of all ages all over the world with whom I share a common interest. So far there's no replacement for this functionality.

When I found myself arguing with trolls, I decided to kill my Facebook account. That was 10 Months ago. I never missed it.

I only allow my friends and family on my Facebook page, which is how I keep the content relevant to me. If someone posts too much about the same thing, or I'm not interested in their posts, I turn them off. This way, I'm always excited to go to Facebook and see what's going on. I do not use Facebook to login to any other accounts.

Necessary and precise article. As for Facebook, the noise is unwanted and now completely avoided.

Great article! I decided to break up with Facebook last month. https://catenacreations.com/why-i-finally-gave-up-on-facebook/ I would add to your “to do” list: check your website, if you have one, to see if there are Facebook-connected widgets/plugins/apps running on it. Connect those widgets to a new account before you take down the old one. I’m a freelance web designer. When I got ready to deactivate my personal account, Facebook took me to their apps page and had me reconnect those apps to the new, private account I’d created for client use only. I discovered this week that a couple other client plugins for WordPress had broken, but no warnings about them came up when I disconnected. It is strange right now to be without Facebook, but for me, I know it’s best in the long run.