UK Edition
How to permanently delete your Instagram account
Fed up of Instagram? Here's how to permanently delete your profile from the image sharing social network.
Instagram has changed the way we keep up to date with friends, family, celebrities and the news. But the constant pressure to diarise our lives and follow what others are doing can be emotionally draining and time consuming.
Britons check their phones 200 times a day on average and spend more time online than they do asleep. Added to that, research shows we can become easily addicted to social media, leading to feelings of isolation in the real world.
If Instagram sucks time from your day or gives you negative feelings it could be time to delete the app and your account.
There are two ways to remove yourself from Instagram. The first is to temporarily disable your account, which means you can return to the app if you change your mind in the future. The second is to permanently delete your account, which means your entire archive will be wiped from Facebook's computers.
How to temporarily disable your Instagram account
If you want to leave Instagram but are not quite ready to permanently delete your profile from the app, you can disable your account.
- You can't deactivate an Instagram account from within the app so you will need to first go to Instagram.com on a browser and log in. You can do this on a desktop computer, laptop, tablet or mobile
- Tap the person icon in the top right hand corner and go to Edit Profile
- Scroll down and, in the bottom right hand corner, tap Permanently disable my account
- Choose an option for why you are disabling your account and Instagram will ask you to enter your password again
- Confirm you want to disable the account
How to permanently delete your Instagram account
If you're completely done with Instagram and want to wipe all memory of your activity from the network you can do so by deleting your account. Think carefully before choosing this option as Instagram will permanently remove your profile, photos, videos, comments, likes and followers when you do.
Before deleting the account you may want to save a copy of all of your photos and videos. You can do this with a third party tool called Instaport. Enter your account details, choose an export method and it will save your pictures for you.
Once saved, you can delete your account with the following steps.
- Go to Instagram.com, log in and go to the deletion page
- Scroll down and select Delete Your Account
- Instagram will ask for a reason as to why you are deleting your account before it lets you
- Re-enter your password and confirm you would like to permanently delete your account