How to delete Instagram in 2022

Are you wondering how to delete Instagram permanently or periodically or just deactivate your Instagram account? Despite the fact that this is one of the most used social networks and together with TikTok has the most potential today, it is possible that you simply desire to spend your time elsewhere.

For this reason, now I want to guide you through this step-by-step guide, on how you can delete your Instagram profile.

Nevertheless, the first thing you should know is that deleting your Instagram profile permanently is not the only option available as if you’re not sure if you may want to use the social media in the future, you have the option to deactivate your Instagram profile for a period of time.

I make this distinction since as you will see later in this guide, if you want to delete your account, but are still not 100% sure of doing so, you can likewise deactivate it.

What is the difference between deleting an Instagram account or temporarily deactivating your profile?

Well, if you are still not completely sure about your Instagram profile, before making the decision to close your account permanently, you should weigh the pros and cons of this action and, furthermore, know that there is a more temporary alternative which is to temporarily disable your Instagram account.

By deactivating Instagram temporarily, the content of your account and your profile will not be visible for the searches of any user. But, you can reactivate and use your account again whenever you desire, just by logging in again.

On the other hand, when deleting your Instagram profile permanently, you are closing your account permanently and losing all your content, info as well as the followers you have following the account. And, if after a while you regret it, you will have to create a new account and start from scratch.

How to delete Instagram account permanently?

Now, if what you want is to delete your profile permanently, you need to carry out the steps that explained below:

1. Access the account

The first step to delete your Instagram account is to access that account using your password and email, as you normally do, but from your Web browser, PC or Mac.

2. Check your account

It is very likely that before closing your account you want to review it in case you want to save some of your photos or videos or contact information. To do this, I recommend downloading them to your hard drive and later transfer them to a removable hard drive, a pen drive, or to the cloud.

You could also include them all in a large file and send it to your own email, using tools such as WeTransfer or similar.

3. Go to ‘Delete your account’ link to delete the account

From this link, you can access the options for removing profiles. As is often the case on all platforms, the option to delete or delete an Instagram account is usually quite hidden, so that no one can delete them by mistake.

4. Answer the question

As when deactivating your profile, the application will ask you why you want to close your user permanently and forever.

In the drop-down menu, you can choose between several causes and you will be offered solutions to avoid closing the account. This is quite useful if the real cause is that you don’t know exactly how to use Instagram.

5. Re-enter the password

After selecting an option, the application will ask you to enter your password again, as extra security. Thus, it will be ensured that no one who found your profile open on another computer wants to delete it without your consent.

6. Press the button “Permanently delete my account”

On the same page where it is requested to indicate the cause of the closure and where you must rewrite your password, you will find a button with the legend “delete my account”. Specifically, it is at the bottom left of the page.

For security reason, Instagram will provide you a period of 1 month before deleting your account permanently, this way, even if you delete your account and within the month you notice that it was a bad idea, you will be able to activate it again.

Once you click on this button and the 1 month period is passed, your account will be deleted permanently, along with all the information contained in it that you have not previously saved.

This option is irreversible, so I recommend that before doing so you consider whether it is better to deactivate your profile temporarily or if you really want to delete your account forever.

Now, and as I mentioned at the beginning of the post if you are not yet determined to permanently delete your or your business’s presence on Instagram, Let’s see how you can take advantage of the option to temporarily close your account in this Facebook-owned social media network.

How to deactivate my Instagram account temporarily?

As I told you at the beginning, if instead of choosing to delete your profile permanently, you only want to deactivate it for a certain time, you can do so by following the steps below:

1. Access your account

As in the previous procedure, first of all, you must enter your account that you want to deactivate from a web browser or computer, enter the email you used to register, and the corresponding password.

If you do not remember the password you must click on the link “Have you forgotten your password?” and follow the steps that the application will indicate.

2. Go edit your profile

Once you are in your profile, you must go to it and select the option “Edit Profile”, which you can easily recognize with the cogwheel icon.

3. Select the option «deactivate account»

Within its options, you must go to the lower right and click on the link “Temporarily deactivate my account.”

4. Answer the final questionnaire

After clicking on the aforementioned link, the application will ask you why you want to deactivate your Instagram account. Among the reasons you can select are:

• I need a break.
• I am concerned about privacy.
• I have created another account.
• I want to remove certain content.
• It takes too much time from my daily routine.

5. Temporarily disable your account

Once you have selected the reason behind you temporarily disable your Instagram account, you will then only have to click on “Temporarily disable my account” and it will be inactive.

When an account is inactive, it is not visible to any other user so, for all intents and purposes, it will appear to have been deleted.

To reactivate your profile, you will only have to access it again with your user data (password and password).

But beware. It may also be the platform that wants to ban you or ban your profile. To avoid this, here are the reasons why this could happen.

Why might Instagram want to delete your account?

As you may have read, there are many reasons for Instagram to delete ban or block an Instagram account. Following are some of the reasons:

1. Posting illegal or tacky content

Just as the person who may be receiving pressure or “cyberbullying” may want to close her profile permanently, the platform itself, if it detects the profile that uploads content from others for illegal or pornographic purposes, can also delete it.

Unfortunately, today this happens much more than you can imagine and is resulting in serious cyberbullying outlines especially affecting the younger female users.

2. Spam

As with Facebook, Twitter, and many other social media platforms, having a “spammer” type behavior may also be penalized with the removal of your Instagram account.

Undue actions such as indiscriminately tagging other users who do not even appear in your images, or mentioning them “without rhyme or reason” in many of your publications, can lead to them reporting this activity to the platform resulting in your account getting permanently removed by Instagram.

3. User Impersonation

How many Instagram accounts Cristiano Ronaldo really have? Well, believe it or not, The famous football player is only accountable for one official account – this means that all other accounts are copying the celebrity’s images illegally.

Of course, the fact of seizing the identity of a private person or company with a presence on this platform is also worthy of being deleted from your account.

The best thing is that you only open an account on Instagram for yourself as a private user, or for your own business. In this way, you will never have problems with this social network or with its policies of good conduct.

Why would you want to delete your Instagram account?

More than 10 million companies in the world use Instagram to brand their businesses online. The social media platform has become one of the main engines of Internet activity, creating up to 70% of the hashtags used on the network, by its more than 100 million active users using Instagram each and every day.

Despite this, there are many reasons that may make you want to close your presence or delete your Instagram account. following are a couple of examples:

1. Delete the current profile to create another

This is one of the main reasons for closing a profile. With the passage of time, people mature and want to give another touch to their presence on social networks.

Therefore, instead of deleting almost all the content uploaded to the app, they decide to delete their Instagram account and start a new one from scratch.

2. Lack of use

If you are not using your Instagram account, the most logical thing to do is to simply close it, since it does not make any sense to have personal data and photos circulating on the network when you do not get any benefit from it.

Here I would like to make a distinction between personal and corporate profiles: in the case of the former, as I have already mentioned, either due to lack of time or interest, you may no longer be able or want to invest your time in the social media.

But if you have a company, it is possible that a while ago, when you started your business, you hired a Community Manager with little experience and made the mistake of opening profiles on almost all social networks, without previously analyzing whether your Target Audience had a presence in the social network.

3. Having found a more suitable social network

Those who know me, know that I always recommend using your time wisely. Your time is limited and spending it trying to hit all the social platforms is difficult. Instead focusing on the right social media platform suited to your type of business and target group will do you well.

Each social media platform has its peculiarities and its audience. On many occasions, you can decide to close a social network to use another one that is more appropriate to your business needs.

This case is very common among professionals and companies that, after a while, decide to optimize efforts, time and money and bet on other more effective digital channels.

4. Family conflicts

If you or your better half do not understand what Instagram is and what exactly it is supposed to be used for, the platform can result in family concerns. Some of them are very serious ones.

Sometimes having your account on Instagram can be a reason for jealousy and disputes between couples. One way to radically fix this problem is to delete both of your accounts.

This usually happens when the use that is given to it is purely personal, and may cause family “friction”, depending on what type of people you add to this platform.

5. Addictions

Instagram as well as other social platforms such as TikTok, Snapchat, Youtube, or Facebook can cause addiction. If you spend too much time using them and you are leaving aside family, work, or studies, the most appropriate action is to delete your Instagram account permanently.

On the other hand, it has also been shown that social networks can promote obsessive behaviors. There are many people who fall into problems of anxiety or depression for not achieving the notoriety (such as followers, likes, or views) they want.

6. Job search

A common practice among companies looking for new employees is to review their profiles to learn about their personality and lifestyle habits. If you have used the social network to post photos where the general trend is that you are partying or making inappropriate comments, it is best to close your account and create a serious profile from scratch.

7. For privacy

The massive theft of data on Facebook has not helped Instgram (which is owned by Facebook) to establish itself as a serious social media platform that takes privacy seriously.

In fact, for this reason, many users who trusted the company with their private information have decided to delete their profiles on Mark Zuckerberg’s social media platforms.

8. Excess competition

Sometimes, brands find that on social networks they cannot meet the objectives of the marketing plan, due to competition and decide to opt for a different approach or other communication channels.

And although before deleting an Instagram account of your business, you must make sure and analyze in-depth your results and conversions from the platform. If the results after some time are bad, even when using appropriate methods and strategies, sometimes it may be best to abandon this social media channel and invest your time in more suitable options.

9. Problems of harassment or «cyberbullying»

Unfortunately, cyberbullying is one of the great problems of today and social networks are one of the means that bullies use to persecute their victims.

In the event of this problem, the best thing to do is to report the bullies to the police (As it is considered a crime in many countries) and maybe deactivate your account for a while until the police have done their work.

How to recover back your Instagram account?

After temporarily deactivating your Instagram profile. You are now found yourself in a situation where you want to recover your profile again. To do this, you just have to enter your username and password and enter the platform and you will see your profile being activated as well as all your content, information, and followers showing back as you left it.

If Instagram has deactivated your account because it believes that you have violated its rules of use, you can appeal the decision. How do you recover your Instagram account in this case?

The first step is to open the application, log in and follow the instructions that appear on your screen.

If the reason for your account deletion was done by someone else other than you, here, I must tell you that unfortunately little can be done in this case. A deleted Instagram account loses everything, followers, photos, videos, messages, everything.

You can send an email to [email protected] and hope to get help from the Instagram support team, or contact the Facebook chat as follow:

• Enter Facebook Business Help
• Scroll to the bottom where it says Get Started to contact a helpdesk.
• Click on Business Pages
• Below in Chat with a representative

Hopefully, with some luck, the support team may be able to retrieve your account back to life.

And this is all to learn how to delete your Instagram account or temporarily deactivate it to rest from the social network.

Final thoughts

I hope this article has helped you to better understand this topic and, of course, to successfully delete your Instagram account or temporarily deactivate your profile, respectively.

And here, let me end by mentioning Kiran Desai’s famous quote:

“The present changes the past. Looking back you do not find what you left behind.”

― Kiran Desai

So make sure to not take hasty conclusions without giving it the appropriate time to properly think things through.