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Follow these steps to delete your Twitter account permanently — and start to regain some extra free time. Next step: delete yourself from social media altogether?

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There are plenty of reasons you may be seeking to learn how to delete your Twitter account. It could be that you are trying to clear up years of embarrassment in the form of microblogs from future employers. Or it could be that you are trying to cleanse yourself from social media for a mental health break. 

For many people, the biggest reason for wanting to delete Twitter or deactivate their Twitter accounts is to lessen their online presence and begin deleting themselves from the internet.

Twitter launched back in 2006 with founder Jack Dorsey’s first message “just setting up my twttr.” The platform has since grown to become a real-time scroll of news and events from around the world. 

Deactivating Twitter is fairly simple to do. The company interestingly implemented a serious backstop for users who aren’t 100% sold on actually deleting their accounts and years of messages, thoughts and feelings.  When finalizing the process to delete your Twitter you can choose from two options: a 30-day wait period for Twitter to delete everything from their servers or a 12-month life raft that will allow you to change your mind over the next year.

Please note, you need to delete each individual tweet separately before deactivating your account if you want to remove them from the internet. This is the first step in deleting yourself from social media.

Downloading your tweet archive

Before you hit the deactivate button to begin the process of deleting yourself from Twitter, you might want to create a backup of your old tweets. Twitter allows users to download an archive of all of their tweets before deactivating.

How to download your tweet archive:

1. On a web browser while logged in to Twitter, click the circle with the three dots on the bottom left of the page.
2. Click Settings and Privacy
3. Select Your Account 
4. Select Download an archive of your data
5. Click Request archive

How to delete your Twitter account

Twitter calls this “deactivating” your account. Which suggests that your data may still be stored on their servers should you ever want to reactivate. More on that later!

1. On a web browser while logged in to Twitter, click the circle with the three dots on the bottom left of the page.
2. Click Settings and Privacy
3. Select Your Account 
4. Click Deactivate your account
5. Choose from a 30 day or 12-month reactivation period
6. Click Deactivate at the bottom of the page

Final notes on deleting Twitter and social media

If you do decide to change your mind within your selected reactivation period, all you need to do is log in to your Twitter account. It will be immediately restored.

Deleted tweets and Twitter accounts can, unfortunately, be traced using internet archive tools such as the Wayback Machine. But, they are much more difficult to find and will not show up in search engines.

Once you have decided to delete Twitter and all of your other social media accounts, the next step in taking back control of your privacy is to remove your name from Internet search engines. To go a step further, you can learn how to delete yourself from the internet. This will reduce your exposure to data breaches, hacks and the possibility of identity theft.