It’s been a few days, and you haven’t seen any posts from your friend on Instagram, so you go through the list of the people you’re following, and — OH — they aren’t on there.
Now, you’re wondering, did they block you? Remove you from their follower list? Or did they decide to delete their Instagram account for peace of mind?
There are many ways to know if an Instagram account has been deleted.
You can search for their username in the app using a different account, try to access their Instagram profile via an incognito browser, go to your mutual friend’s profile and check if they’re still following each other, check out their other social media profiles to find clues, or directly ask them about it.
You would know if you were removed from their follower list. But it’s hard to tell whether you were blocked or they deactivated/deleted their account if you don’t do some investigation.
What happens after taking those actions is the same: their profile will be unavailable to you.
Here’s how to know if an Instagram account has been deleted.
How To Know If an Instagram Account Is Deleted
When a user deletes their account, Instagram won’t notify anyone, even their closest friends.
But you will see your number of followers decrease by one, and if you dig deep into it, you will know who in particular is missing. You will overthink the situation, so you will want to know why.
Let’s find out if they blocked you, removed you, or deleted their account.
Method #1: Search for Their Instagram Username
If you search for their Instagram username or name using a different account that isn’t in any way associated with them and their profile appears, it means they blocked you.
But if it doesn’t appear, their profile doesn’t exist, so they probably deactivated it or deleted it for good.
Method #2: Open Their Instagram Profile Using an Incognito Window
You don’t necessarily have to use an incognito window. What’s important here is there should be no Instagram account logged in on the web browser.
What you will do is simply type www.instagram.com/{their username} in the address bar, and if their profile isn’t active anymore, you will see this on the page: “Sorry, this page isn’t available.”
If their profile shows up, then they blocked you.
Method #3: Go to Your Mutual Friend’s Instagram Profile
This method will let you know if they just removed you from their followers and didn’t really delete their account.
Go to your mutual friend’s profile and head over to their follower and following lists. If you search for them and their profile shows up, their account is still active, and they just don’t want you to follow them.
That’s disappointing but not worse than being blocked. If you’re close to the person and you’re sure you didn’t do anything that upset them, you can ask them why because maybe it wasn’t their intention to remove you; perhaps they did it by mistake.
Method #4: Check Out Their Other Social Media Profiles
Many people put the links to their Instagram accounts on the other social media profiles that they own.
If you don’t see it on their profile, they may have deleted it, especially if it was there the last time you checked.
Or maybe they informed their social media friends about their account deletion, and you will see it on their profile feed if they did that.
Method #5: Ask Them
If, after doing the four methods, you still aren’t sure whether they deleted their Instagram account or blocked you, you can ask them why their profile disappeared.
This is the most effective way to know if an Instagram account is deleted because they will tell you straight up if it was deleted — or if you were blocked.
Conclusion
People would want to delete their Instagram accounts for many reasons, but the most common is connected to their mental health.
It’s not news that social media, in general, has the power to make us feel insecure because people love flaunting their assets, beauty, wealth, and other good things online.
And the more good things we see in other people (real or not), the more bad things we see in ourselves.
Deleting an Instagram account is permanent. Your videos, photos, reels, stories, archives, and everything will be gone for good.
If you want to pause on Instagram to focus on something else or to manage your mental health more effectively, you can deactivate your account to come back anytime.
To deactivate an Instagram account, go to your profile settings on a web browser and click “Temporarily deactivate my account” next to the “Submit” button.
