How to find your oldest social media posts and delete them

We’ve been surviving with societal media for a agelong clip present — Facebook opened up to the nationalist successful 2006 — and that means a lengthy way of posts stretching backmost done the years. While this does fto you instrumentality a nostalgic travel into the past with conscionable a fewer clicks, it tin besides bring up immoderate embarrassing and awkward memories.

Maybe your Twitter takes from 10 years agone haven’t aged well, oregon there’s an ex-partner you’d alternatively not remember, oregon you’re heading for a occupation interrogation and don’t privation your would-be employers to justice who you are present from your decades-old societal media posts.

Whatever the reason, you tin find and delete past societal media posts without excessively overmuch trouble utilizing the web oregon mobile apps. (They accidental that thing connected the net is forever, of course, but you tin bash your champion to astatine slightest somewhat mute your mistakes. Who knows? Maybe your imaginable caller brag ne'er heard of the Wayback Machine.) We’ve included instructions for Facebook, X, and Instagram, arsenic these are the places wherever you’re astir apt to person posted contented you’ve agelong since forgotten about.

Facebook

Facebook is closing successful connected 20 years of being disposable to anyone with an email address, truthful let’s commencement there. If you were astir erstwhile Facebook archetypal arrived, you’ll retrieve idiosyncratic presumption updates were overmuch much communal than they are present — radical adjacent utilized to constitute connected each other’s profiles, MySpace-style.

You tin spell backmost done your posts connected mobile, too.

Don’t retrieve erstwhile you joined Facebook? That’s thing you tin find out, though the process is simply a small complicated:

On the web:

On the mobile app:

If you person a batch of posts to sift through, you tin usage different filters (like month) to constrictive down the results. If you spot thing you privation to get escaped of, conscionable click the 3 dots adjacent to it, past click Delete post.

X / Twitter

X, which was antecedently known arsenic Twitter, tin often beryllium a spot for opinions and takes, and it’s imaginable — adjacent probable — that immoderate of them person aged amended than others. If you privation to spell down representation lane (and assuming you haven’t already deactivated your account), you tin get to your oldest tweets successful a fewer ways, but utilizing the platform’s built-in hunt motor is the astir straightforward.

To delete a tweet, click the 3 dots adjacent to it, past click Delete.

If you don’t retrieve erstwhile you archetypal joined, spell to your Profile; the day you joined should beryllium beneath your description.

If you privation to usage the mobile app for X instead, you tin usage the aforesaid hunt presumption arsenic supra to find your tweets. Just pat the magnifying solid icon astatine the bottommost of the surface to get to the hunt box.

Instagram

Instagram is lone a fewer years down Facebook and X erstwhile it comes to age, appearing successful nationalist for the archetypal clip successful 2010. That’s a batch of years for photos and videos to physique up connected your nationalist feed, adjacent if a batch of Instagram enactment is focused connected Stories, which automatically disappear.

Here, you’re champion disconnected utilizing the Instagram app connected mobile:

Your first-ever Instagram posts volition past look astatine the apical of the screen. If you privation to beryllium much circumstantial successful your search, pat the All dates drop-down menu, which lets you look for Instagram posts wrong a circumstantial day range.

If you spot thing you’d alternatively not person connected your Instagram profile, pat connected the post, pat the 3 dots successful the top-right corner, and past take Delete. The aforesaid paper lets you archive a post, which means you tin inactive spot it (and each the comments and likes), but it’s hidden for everyone else.