Facebook can be fun, but sometimes you just get sick of it all. Have you considered deactivating your account? Maybe you’re completely done with it, and just want to delete your account already. Well, you’re in luck. Read this article and we’ll help you delete your Facebook account permanently.
Before you permanently delete your Facebook account, you might want to download everything on there. Rather than going to every page individually and hitting download, Facebook gives you the option to download all the data you’ve put on Facebook in one go. Facebook calls this option “Download a copy of your Facebook data”, and it’s actually relatively easy to access. You hit the little downwards pointing arrow at the top right of any Facebook page. This will open a small dropdown menu in which you can find the “Settings” page. Once you click on that, you’ll see the option to “Download a copy of your Facebook data”. It should be below “General Account Settings”. Hit “Start my Archive” and it will immediately start downloading all the data you’ve ever put on Facebook.
Once you’ve hit “Start my Archive” you might be wondering what you’re actually downloading. When Facebook says they’re giving you all the data you’ve ever put on Facebook, they’re not messing around. Not this time, anyway. This is a list of the main things that you get, but there’s of course many more things that you are downloading:
Before you delete your Facebook account, keep in mind what apps you use that require you login with Facebook first. Spotify for example gives you the option to sign up using Facebook, just like many more programs out there. To change how you log into these apps you either need to go to the apps website and change it manually, but sometimes deactivating the apps before you delete your Facebook account will do the trick. To do this you go to “Settings”, hit “Apps” and from there on hit “Turn off Platform”.
Facebook doesn’t want you to delete your Facebook account. They make money off of you, so they want to keep you. Maybe that’s why they make it so darn hard to actually find the option to delete your Facebook account. To delete your Facebook account permanently, you must click around the “Help” section a couple times before you get to a page that lets you delete your account. Once you hit the “Delete my Account” button, that’s it. Except, it won’t be instant. That’s right, Facebook needs some time to “clean your page up”. It’s a process. Facebook will send you an e-mail (check your junk folder if you don’t have it) informing you of their cleaning up process. Don’t login for the next two weeks, or else your account will be restored to normal. Facebook, in their “Data Use Policy”, states that it may take up to a month for your account to be fully deleted, but that it might stay in caches and Facebook backups for up to ninety days.
You may have found several links on the internet pointing you towards how to deactivate your Facebook account, rather than delete it. This is fine, of course, but it’s not the same as deleting your account. There are some differences between deactivating your Facebook account and deleting your Facebook account. This is what deactivating your Facebook account does:
