Done with Facebook? Here's how to deactivate or permanently delete your Facebook account

The social media giant has drawn its share of criticism on multiple fronts, such as how it handles the spread of misinformation on its platform or its strategies for safeguarding your personal data.

Recently, social justice and civil rights groups are urging users to join in a nationwide boycott of Facebook, claiming the site has caused significant harm to American life.

And last year, following the death of George Floyd, advertisers pledged to stop marketing on Facebook as part of a temporary boycott over the social network's failure to remove hate speech.

Whether it's to avoid political rants or worries about how your data is managed, it is fairly easy to escape Facebook if and when you're ready to leave.

When you deactivate your Facebook account, you can come back whenever you want. While it's deactivated, users can't see your timeline or search you, and pages you control will be deactivated. However, some information like messages you send may remain visible to other users.

When you delete your account, it's permanent and you can't go back. Everything you have added to your account is deleted permanently within a few days of your decision. Friends may still have access to messages you sent after your account was deleted. Facebook says copies of some data such as log records may stay in their database "but are disassociated from personal identifiers."

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