How to delete your Facebook account

Barbara Krasnoff, Micah Singleton

How to delete your Facebook account

Recent events have many people wondering whether it’s time to leave Meta’s well-known social network.

Facebook symbol with background of a variety of icons representing social networking.

You may be wondering how to delete your Facebook account now that fact-checking is no longer considered important, and Meta’s changing its definition of what constitutes Hateful Conduct. It’s easy to do, and we’ll show you how. But you should download all your stuff first.

The following instructions are for the web version of Facebook, but you can follow pretty much the same sequence on the mobile app.

Download your archives

Your Facebook archives contain just about all of the pertinent information related to your account, including your photos, active sessions, chat history, IP addresses, facial recognition data, and which ads you clicked. That’s personal information you should save.

Click on your personal icon in the upper-right corner.
Go to Settings & Privacy > Settings.
Click on the Accounts Center box on the left.

Go to Your information and permissions on the left, and then Download Your Information > Download or transfer information.
You can choose to transfer information from your Facebook or Instagram account (or both).
You now have another choice. You can select Available information, which includes everything but data logs. (Meta defines these as “additional details we collect and store that can be associated with you.”) Or you can select Specific types of information, which allows you to determine exactly what you want to download, including those data logs.
If you choose the latter, you can then select from the variety of data you’ve accumulated, including posts, friends, logged information, saved items and collections, etc. (You can also get the data logs, although Facebook warns it could take 15 days for them to show.) Click on Select all — but be aware you have to click it for each category. When you’re ready, select Next.

Choose Download to device or Transfer to destination. According to Meta, the typical download is about 2.5GB.
You’ll now be able to select the date range of the info you want to download (or you can simply download all of it), the format (usually HTML or JSON), and the media quality (low, medium, or high). Enter an email address for a notification when the download is ready.
Finally, select Create files. You’ll receive an email when your file is ready, and it will be available for a few days. If you’ve been waiting a while and want to know the status of your download (or want to cancel it), go back to the Download your information tab.

Delete your account

You’re ready to delete your account once you’ve finished downloading your archive.

When you are ready, go back to the Accounts Center and click on Personal Details > Account ownership and control > Deactivation or deletion.
Click Deactivation and Deletion.
If you have both Facebook and Instagram accounts, you will be asked to choose one.

If you only want to deactivate your account temporarily (maybe you hope CEO Mark Zuckerberg will change his mind?), you can choose to do so. Otherwise, select Delete account and click Continue.
You’ll be informed of any other accounts you have with Meta and given several options to explain why you’re leaving. Just keep hitting Continue.

You’ll see an option to deactivate your account instead or save the posts in your archive, download your info, and review the apps you’re logged into. When you’re ready, hit Continue.
You’ll be asked for your password for confirmation. Enter it.
Finally ready? Hit Delete account.
Once you click Delete account, your account will be marked for termination and inaccessible to others using Facebook.

Meta notes that it delays termination for a few days after the request has gone through. The deletion will be canceled if you log back in during that period. So don’t sign on, or you’ll be forced to start the process over again.

Certain things, like comments you’ve made on a friend’s post, may still appear even after you delete your account. Facebook also says that copies of certain items like log records will remain in its database, but it notes that those are disassociated with personal identifiers.

If you’re really serious about quitting anything associated with Meta, remember that the company owns several other popular services as well, like Instagram, WhatsApp, and Threads, so you should delete your accounts there, too.

Update January 9th, 2025: This article was originally published on September 28th, 2018, and has been updated several times to allow for changes in the Facebook interface.

Barbara Krasnoff
Micah Singleton

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