How to Deactivate Facebook Account & Erase It

How to Deactivate Facebook Account & Erase It

Facebook is one of the leading and strongest applications of social media and messaging. It keeps getting stronger by incorporating Instagram. Facebook has billions of followers, and the count keeps becoming more day by day. Even though it is always on the rise, the idea to deactivate the Facebook account may come to mind for some reason.

This idea is useful when we don’t want to use our account for some time but not leave it behind permanently. We can go away from the scene by deactivating the account for a while.

Don’t worry; it’ll still be there when you decide to come back! In this article, we will talk about how to deactivate and delete an account. Let’s begin.

How to Deactivate Facebook Temporarily

The process of deactivating a Facebook account is quite simple. Afterward, whenever you want, you can easily activate your account and keep using it.

Step-by-step deactivate Facebook account:

to deactivate the facebook account
  • The first thing to do to deactivate a Facebook account, log into the application using your password.
  • After you logged in, tap on the symbol three lines over each other (shown above).
  • It’s at the right top corner of your page.
to deactivate the facebook account
  • In the screen that comes up, you will see the “Settings & Privacy” button.
  • Tap on that button and proceed by going to settings.
to deactivate the facebook account
  • To deactivate a Facebook account, settings are quite important.
  • You will see all the settings about your Facebook account.
  • Tap on the “General” button to proceed.
to deactivate the facebook account
  • Now you need to choose the “Manage Account” button.
to deactivate the facebook account
  • You can choose a Legacy Contact if you desire; they can control your account while you’re gone.
  • This may be a good move for business accounts that are on Facebook.
  • If not, simply tap on the “Deactivate” button.
to deactivate the facebook account
  • Basically, after this moment, your account has been deactivated until you choose to activate again.
  • When you log in again using your password, your account becomes active again.

What Happens After I Deactivate My Account?

You’ve followed the steps above and deactivated your account. Now you know how to do it.

So now what, you may be wondering. Because of your choice to deactivate the account, nobody can reach your Facebook page from now on.

In short, you won’t come up with any name searches on the website. But what you need to know about all this is that Facebook and Messenger accounts are separate.

Just because you deactivated your Facebook doesn’t mean your Messenger is also deactivated. You can still use Messenger while not having an active FB account. So you can still send and receive messages easily.

  • After you deactivate the Facebook account, you will still see your messages and the ones you sent on Messenger.
  • But when they tap on the “See Profile” button, nothing will come up.
  • Sometimes they can still see your profile picture; sometimes, it seems without a profile phone.

As we said above, the Messenger application is different than the Facebook app. Facebook being deactivated, doesn’t affect the other.

  • Your friends can still find and text you on Messenger after you deactivated your account on Facebook. 
  • If you don’t want that, you also need to deactivate your Messenger account.

The good thing is, we’re here, and we can teach you how to do it step by step.

How to Deactivate Messenger Account

To deactivate the Messenger account, first, you have to deactivate the account of your Facebook.

It’s the parent application of Messenger, after all. Doing this is necessary to deactivate the Messenger account.

to deactivate the facebook account
  • Firstly, you need to enter the Messenger app.
  • Then tap on your profile picture at the top. (left picture)
  • After this, you will see the “Legal & Policies” tab. (right picture). Tap on that button.
to deactivate the facebook account
  • In the “Legal & Policies” tab, we can see the “Deactivate Messenger” button.
  • After you tap that button, it will ask you to enter your password.
  • Once you did that, that’s pretty much it. Your messenger account is deactivated now.

How to Delete a Facebook Account Permanently

Above, we talked about how to temporarily deactivate your account. You could go, but you could always come back. You could turn your back, but it’d always be waiting for you.

Its’ love for you was unconditional. But if you delete your Facebook account, then it won’t be there when you get back anymore.

You need to remember; this is a permanent decision. There is no way of getting your account back if you delete the Facebook account that you own. No going back.

  • Warning: When you delete the Facebook account, every page you own, moderate, or created will also get deleted.
  • If you don’t want those pages to get deleted alongside you, it’s best to make someone else a moderator/owner before deleting your account.
  • Otherwise, all of those will perish right along with your account.

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, I suppose.

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Even if you delete your account, some things stay undeleted. For example, a message you send to your friend will still stay in that person’s inbox. Even though you deleted your account and everything with it permanently, that message, that text, will always stay there one moment in time.

Also, Facebook needs some time to examine before it deletes everything for good. After you chose to delete your account, you need to wait approximately 90 days.

Only in this timespan, your photos and/or other posts you have will get deleted. So, you still need to wait for clear results. Nothing happens in an instant; it requires time.

  • You deleted your Facebook account. We spoke about how you need to wait for 90 days after this decision.
  • Your information and data will be erased slowly over time. For the confirmation of your account’s deletion, you need to wait two weeks.

If you log into your account in this timeframe, if there is any activity with the account in this timeframe, your account will not be deleted. Let’s get to how you can delete the Facebook account permanently now.

The stages of deleting the Facebook account:

  1. We mentioned how, for two weeks, your account has to be completely inactive.
  2. To do this, firstly, you have to remove the apps that are connected to your Facebook account.
  3. This way, your account won’t have any activity.

How to Remove the Apps That Are Connected to Facebook

  • Tap the three lines at the corner when you’re on the app. (in the red square picture below)
  •  Scroll down, and you will see settings; after that, tap on “Account Settings.”
    • You will see all the apps and websites that are connected to your Facebook account here.
    • You can select manually, choose all of them, or search for certain apps.
    • After you choose the apps and tap on “Remove,” it will ask for confirmation.
    • After you hit the remove button, that’s it.
    • You just deleted the connection Facebook had with these applications. 

Conclusion on Deactivating Facebook

Deactivating your account from a website like Facebook can be challenging. The allure of answering quizzes and receiving “likes” keeps many people intact to their screens. But if you have the power to step away from the endless stream of notifications, you might find yourself appreciating life more. And it all begins with deactivating an account.

You may also like this article: How to Log Out of Facebook.

Frequently Asked Questions

You can do it by clicking settings, Your Facebook Information, Deactivation, and Deletion. Then you can choose Deactivate Account and continue. Your account will be deactivated until your next login.

You can keep your account deactivated for 30 days until it gets deleted permanently.

When your Facebook is deactivated, your friends can’t see your profile, but they won’t notify it.

James Orublig

Posts: 568

Hi, my name is James but my friend calls me JamesTheNews since I always have the latest news about social media. Follow my blogs to learn every bit of trickery there is to social media.

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1 Comment

  1. Ryan Edwards
    Ryan Edwards

    I need to deactivate the facebook account and erase it as I spend too much time on it. Can’t believe all the time I have spent on it. Love the way you write ,btw.