If you've decided that you're done with Instagram, you can either temporarily disable your account, maintaining your followers, images, comments, and likes—or you can just do away with it all and delete your account completely.

In this article, we’ll take a look at how you can deactivate or delete your Instagram account. Additionally, we’ll discuss if there’s a chance of getting your account back once you deactivate or delete it.

The Difference Between Deactivating and Deleting Your Instagram Account

Instagram introduced the deactivation feature so that users can take a break from social media without losing their Instagram profile and account settings.

By deactivating your Instagram account, you’ll hide all of your photos, videos, followers, comments, likes, and other account information. Also, once you deactivate your account, no one will be able to find and visit your profile. However, you will not lose any account data.

Phone With instagram open and person liking post

If you decide to delete your account, your account will become unavailable and Instagram will permanently delete all of your data. This means you will lose every photo that you’ve posted.

Now, if your Instagram profile is the only place where you keep them, we recommend downloading and saving all your Instagram photos.

Hopefully, you can now decide if you should deactivate or delete or Instagram account. We’ll walk you through the instructions for each process.

How to Deactivate Your Instagram Account

If you just want to take a break from Instagram, but still want to keep your account data, deactivating your account is the right call.

Here’s how you can deactivate your Instagram account on your desktop:

  1. Head to Instagram’s Accounts Center.
  2. From Account settings, select Personal details.
  3. Click Account ownership and control > Deactivation or deletion.
    How to deactivate IG account on web
  4. If you have multiple accounts, select the one you want to deactivate.
  5. Choose Deactivate account.
  6. Click Continue and confirm the action.
    Deactivate IG account online

If you own an Android device, go through the below steps to deactivate your Instagram account:

  1. Launch the Instagram app.
  2. Tap on your profile icon
  3. Open the three-line menu and go to Settings and privacy.
  4. Tap Accounts Center > Personal details.
  5. Select Account ownership and control > Deactivation or deletion. Make sure you select the account you want to deactivate.
  6. Select Deactivate account and tap the Continue button at the bottom of the page.

On an iOS or iPadOS device, tap on your profile icon and open the three-line menu from the top-right corner. Then, head to Account > Delete account and choose Deactivate account. Give Instagram the reason why you're deactivating your account. Enter your password, tap Temporarily Deactivate Account, and confirm the action.

You can go through the above steps even if you want to take just a few days off from Instagram. Once the social media detox is complete, you can easily reactivate your Instagram account.

However, you should know that you can only deactivate your profile once a week.

How to Delete Your Instagram Account

Maybe you don’t want to go back to Instagram, so there’s no point in deactivating your account.

If you want to quit social media for good and want to start with Instagram, here’s how you can delete your Instagram account on desktop:

  1. Go to Instagram’s Accounts Center.
  2. From the left pane, click Personal details.
  3. Head to Account and control > Deactivation or deletion.
  4. Choose the account you want to delete.
  5. Select the Delete account option.
  6. Click Continue and confirm the action by typing in your password.
    Delete your IG account online

Alternatively, you can delete your Instagram account on your Android device:

  1. Within the Instagram app, tap on your profile icon
  2. Tap the three-line menu.
  3. Head to Settings and privacy > Account Center > Personal details.
  4. Tap on Account ownership and control.
  5. Select Deactivation or deletion.
  6. Choose Delete account and tap the Continue button.

The process is quite similar if you own an iOS or iPadOS device. Open the three-line menu and head to Account > Delete account. Tap Delete account > Continue Deleting account. Type in your password, tap Delete and OK to confirm the action.

Can You Get a Deleted Account Back?

If you’ve deleted your Instagram account because of a rash decision, you can still get it back for a limited period of time. According to Instagram, you have 30 days to recover your account. All you have to do is to sign into your account as you usually do.

Once the 30 days have passed, you’ll get the Access not found message, meaning your account was permanently deleted. In this case, you may have no other option than to create a new Instagram account from scratch.

Should You Delete or Deactivate Your Instagram Account?

Now you know how to deactivate or delete your Instagram account and the difference between these two options. In the end, the choice is yours. If you’re not ready to make the big step of deleting your account, you can deactivate it for as long as you want.

This way, you can still mitigate social media's negative effects.