A Quick Guide on Deactivating Instagram Without Deleting Your Account

Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, competed directly with X (formerly Twitter) last year with the July 5 announcement of Threads. Threads is a text-centric social media platform that closely resembles X. In just five days, Threads reached 100 million users. In a pre-launch blog post, Meta described Threads as follows: “Threads is a new app built by the Instagram team for sharing text updates and participating in public conversations. You log in with your Instagram account, and posts can be up to 500 characters long, including links, photos, and videos up to no more than 5 minutes.

However, soon after its release, the excitement surrounding Threads was significantly reduced. Many people also criticized Meta for implementing a feature that automatically deleted an Instagram account when a Threads account was deleted. This concern arose after many individuals created their IDs on Threads using their Instagram profiles.

A notice on Instagram’s help center warned users: “Deleting your Threads profile does not delete your Instagram account. However, deleting your Instagram account also deletes your Threads profile, as it is managed by your Instagram account.

Five months after launch, Instagram CEO Adam Mosser shared two important updates on his Threads account. He mentioned that based on feedback, they would roll out an update that would allow users to delete their Threads account while keeping their Instagram account. He added: “Secondly, we recently launched a feature that makes it easy for people to see Threads posts directly on Facebook and Instagram, helping to expand your audience and grow your reach.”

To disable or delete your Threads account:

1. Open the Threads app and click the profile icon in the lower right corner.

2. Tap the two stacked lines in the upper right corner to go to Settings.

3. Click on “Account” from the list and you will find the “Remove or remove profile” option. If you choose Deactivate, all your messages will be archived and you can reactivate your account later. If you select Delete, your account will be deleted without affecting the linked Instagram account.

4. Click Delete to delete your Threads account. You can cancel your deletion request within 30 days.