Jump to instructions

Yesterday, I decided to close my Meta accounts. 

It took me nearly no time to decide that it's what I wanted to do, though I did struggle with the repercussions. Because I'm an elder millennial, Facebook held nearly twenty years' worth of my social life in its nets–photos of my best friends in their teen years, drunken pokes from college crushes, vidoes of my now-dead dog, and wedding portraits–and because I've also worked in tech since the early 2010s, most employers and clients I've worked with had keys tied to my account. Their marketing integrations, analytics pixels, and verifications all went through me. I'd also been drawn in by the ease of single sign-on. A ton of non-Meta apps were tied to my Facebook login, including things I used every day, like Spotify, and apps that I used occasionally, but needed access to quickly when I did use them, like IcelandAir.

Then there was Instagram, which I joined in its early days of sepia tones and borders with a torn-paper look. I'd gone to college with two of the early employees and felt a bit of pride at how well that startup had done, so I dove in with vigor. Every trip I'd taken with my husband was on there, as well as all the reminders of my twenties: life in a cruddy "3-bedroom" $1,400-a-month rental house in downtown Boulder, where one of my roommates slept in a non-conforming lean-to off the former back door; going to Regionals with my all-female eight-ball team; the first whisps of smoke off the Fourmile Fire; the green cafe racer my husband built for me, which I could never kick-start. When stories were introduced, I posted videos of everything I found funny and sweet and beautiful: My dog curling up on a bed of rocks as if it was the comfiest pillow, my oldest nephew putting a diaper on his head and walking into a wall, a timelapse of the rushing clouds over the Indian Peaks at sunset. 

And it wasn't just memories on Instagram. It was also full of connections. I grew up in Colorado and Scotland, and my friends from high school now live everywhere from Hong Kong to London. Often, I would take a trip and post a quick story of my location, only to have an old friend write back and say they were nearby and would love to grab dinner. I reforged connections via Instagram in a way I don't think would have happened if I hadn't been sharing my travels or if I'd posted them on a less-trafficked social platform. 

WhatsApp was the other way I communicated with these friends. This is an especially hard platform to let go of, because I am currently in Italy for six weeks, and it is my primary means of communicating with the owner of the apartment I am staying in. 

So I decided to table the WhatsApp deletion for now, but to continue getting rid of the rest. 

And yet, it was hard. I have decades of experience in tech, and it was still hard. Over the years, Meta created a web within The Web, and I was the fly trapped inside it. As a business decision, it was genius. But as an insect trying to extricate myself, I was pissed off.

And boy, was it a beast of a job. So now I've put together a step-by-step guide (which is as up-to-date as I can make it from the time I've published this post, but will surely fall out-of-date as Meta and other platforms update their UIs) for how to get off the Meta platforms.

Instructions for deleting Meta Accounts

🔑 First things first, do you know all your passwords?

If you're good at this sort of thing, skip this step. But I had multiple instagram accounts and I'd given my phone trusted status, which meant that they had been logged in for so many years that my passwords weren't in my password manager anymore. Amazing. So before doing anything else, I had to make sure I knew what my passwords were, because Meta doesn't let you delete accounts without that. 

Before changing any passwords, if you set up 2-factor authentication on anything, make sure to go into your Meta Accounts Center and either turn this off or follow the prompts to get Backup Codes for whatever accounts you have, so that you will be able to delete them.

☎️ Let everyone know how to contact you

If you're like me and had tons of connections on your various accounts, it might be worth it to let all your contacts know that you're about to go black. If you ’ve set up any new social media (like Bluesky or Mastodon) now's the time to let people know. Or just give them your phone number. Whatever.

If you are using a developer account for any of your clients or your own businesses, contact those and give them enough time and explanation for them to set up a new point of contact for their FB API connections. I won't go into more info about that here, because if you're a developer, you ’ll figure this out on your own.