Find out how to delete your Instagram account or temporarily deactivate it, step by step, easily from any device.
Have you considered a new beginning in your digital life and want to turn the page and forget your past on Instagram? We are going to explain the two options available to delete your Instagram account: temporarily and permanently.
How to delete your Instagram account from your mobile
Since the update to the Meta apps, which introduced the new Account Center, the process for deactivating or deleting your social media accounts has been simplified, as we saw in the steps to follow to delete your Facebook account. You can do it from both an Android and an Apple device, but there are small differences in the interface.
How to delete your Instagram account on Android
The steps you must follow are:
- Go to your Instagram profile
- Touch
and then Settings & Privacy.
- Tap Learn more in the Account Center, then Personal details.
- Tap Account Ownership and Control, then Deactivation or Deletion.
- Choose the account you want to temporarily deactivate or permanently delete.
- Tap Deactivate account (temporary) or Delete account (permanently), then tap Continue.
How to delete your Instagram account on iPhone
If you are using a mobile phone with an iOS operating system, that is, an iPhone, the steps to follow are the same:
After you’ve selected one of the options (delete or deactivate), Instagram will ask you a couple of questions regarding why you want to leave. After answering them, you just have to enter your account password to verify that it’s you and you’ll have deactivated or deleted your Instagram account.
What does it mean to deactivate your Instagram account?
From that moment on, you will be invisible to all other users present in the application.
This means that your photos, comments, and likes will not be visible to other users. They will also not be able to mention you, tag you, or anything like that: for all intents and purposes, you will have deleted your presence on that account. To reactivate it, you will simply need to log back into that Instagram profile.
Important: Temporary deactivation can only be done once a week. Otherwise, Instagram may think that your account has been hacked or that a bot is using it.
What it means to permanently delete your Instagram account
The first thing you should know is that you must be sure of the decision you have made.
Deleting an Instagram account can have implications that you cannot reverse later, since if you decide to delete it permanently, all your photos, posts and information will disappear from the platform, so before you start you should download everything you want to keep.
After you select this option, Instagram will delete your entire presence from the network after 30 days from the request, although you may be able to re-register with the same username as the deleted account unless it is already being used by someone else. However, if your account has been deleted for violating community guidelines, registering with the same username may not be possible.
However, the process of deleting an account can take up to three months. Meta may keep copies of your content in backup storage in case something happens that causes data loss. All this information is available in their Privacy Policy.
Remember that the most important difference between deactivating an account and deleting it is the ability to access the information and profile of that account again. When you decide to recover it after deactivating it, you will be able to have your entire feedback exactly as you last saw it, while if you delete it, you will have to say goodbye forever to all the work and time you have invested in your profile (unless you decide to start from scratch again).
In case you want to delete your account forever, we recommend making a backup of your profile. By doing this, you will be able to download all the posts and interactions from your account without losing anything.
But why did we decide to delete our Instagram account?
One of the most classic questions throughout the history of social networks is… how to unsubscribe from them. The truth is that, despite what may seem strange to us, there are different compelling reasons that can lead people to make a decision as radical as deleting their Instagram account. And in fact, as you can see in this Google Trends graph, it is the social network on which most people ask how to delete their profile.
Of course, privacy is one of them, but there is also the fact of having violated some of the terms of use of the platform. There are also those who decide to unsubscribe due to the amount of advertising on the platform, due to lack of use, to create a new account, or even for reasons of cyberbullying.
We hope that this article has helped you to better understand this social network and, of course, learn how to deactivate or delete your Instagram account.
