How to Find Your Older Social Media Posts and Delete Them

We’ve been around social media for a long time – Facebook was opened to the public in 2006 – and that means a long trail of posts going back over the years. While this allows you to take a nostalgic trip down memory lane with just a few clicks, it can also bring up some awkward and embarrassing memories.

Maybe your Twitter feed from 10 years ago hasn’t aged well, or there’s an ex-partner you’d rather not remember, or you’re going for a job interview and don’t want your potential employers to judge who you are now from your posts. decades on social media.

Whatever the reason, you can find and delete old social media posts without much difficulty using the web or mobile apps. (They say anything on the internet is forever, of course, but you can do your best to at least somewhat silence your mistakes. Who knows? Maybe your potential new boss has never heard of the Wayback machine.) We’ve included instructions for Facebook, X, and Instagram, as these are the places where you’re most likely to post content you’ve long forgotten about.

Facebook is celebrating 20 years of being available to anyone with an email address, so let’s start there. If you were around when Facebook arrived, you’ll remember that personal status updates were much more common than they are now – people even used to write on each other’s profiles, MySpace style.

The easiest way to find your older posts is to upload Facebook on the web:

• Select your name (on the left) to view your profile.
• At the top of the column with your posts listed (just below the What’s on your mind? field), look for and click on the Filters button.
• Use the Go to drop-down menu to find the year you joined Facebook. (Don’t remember when you signed up? We’ll tell you how to find this information in a moment.)
• Click Done to see posts from that year.

You can also review your posts on mobile.

• Open yours Facebook profile in the mobile app.
• Scroll down to your posts and look for (and tap) the Filters link to the right.
• With mobile devices, it’s a little weirder; you can’t just jump to specific years, but rather access a calendar.

Don’t you remember when you joined Facebook? This is something you can figure out, although the process is a bit complicated:

• Open Facebook and click on your profile picture.
• Select Settings and privacy > Settings.
• Look for the Account Center on the right side of your page. Select it and go to Your information and permissions > Access your information > Personal information.
• Your account creation date will be the first thing below Profile Information.

• Select your profile picture in the top right corner.
• Go to Settings and privacy > Settings > Account center > Your information and permissions > Access your information > Personal information.
• As with the web version, if you search Profile Informationyou will see the date you created your account.

If you have a lot of posts to analyze, you can use other filters (like month) to narrow the results. If you see something you want to get rid of, just click the three dots next to it and click Delete the post.

X, which was formerly known as Twitter, can often be a place for views and opinions, and it’s possible — even likely — that some of them have aged better than others. If you want to go back in time (and assuming you haven’t already deactivated your account), you can access your older tweets in a few ways, but using the platform’s built-in search engine is the simplest.

• Type (from:username) to:yyyy-mm-dd from:yyyy-mm-dd in the search box at the top of the page.
• Change the username to the handle X, adjust the dates and click To type.
• click on the Last tab at the top to sort posts chronologically.

To delete a tweet, click the three dots next to it and click Delete.

If you don’t remember when you first logged in, go to your Profile; The date you joined should be below your description.

If you want to use the mobile app for X, you can use the same search terms above to find your tweets. Just tap the magnifying glass icon at the bottom of the screen to access the search box.

Instagram is only a few years behind Facebook and . is focused on Stories, which disappear automatically.

Here, it’s best to use the Instagram app on your phone:

• Tap your profile photo (bottom right).
• Tap the three horizontal lines (top right).
• To choose Your activity > Posts.
• Touch From newest to oldest and change to From oldest to newest.

Your first Instagram posts will appear at the top of the screen. If you want to be more specific in your search, tap the All dates drop-down menu, which allows you to search for Instagram posts within a specific date range.

If you see something you’d rather not have on your Instagram profile, tap the post, tap the three dots in the top right corner, and choose Delete. The same menu lets you archive a post, meaning you can still see it (and all the comments and likes), but it’s hidden from everyone else.