How to Clean Up Your Old Social Media Posts
As social media platforms have evolved, they’ve become more and more about the moment—what you’re doing now, rather than what you were doing five years ago. While looking back through photos and posts can be heart-warming and provide a buzz of nostalgia, it can also be painful and embarrassing.
If your social media life spans more than a few years, you might not want friends, family, or prospective employers looking back on the sort of person you used to be. Here we’ll show you how you can scrub your timelines on the three biggest social platforms, using both built-in tools and third-party add-ons.
Before you get started, don’t forget you have the option of backing up your posts first (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram). We should also remind you that you use these third-party tools at your own risk—remember you’re giving them access to all of your social media history, and perhaps more, so bear that in mind before connecting.
Facebook has now added a bulk delete tool to make it easier to clean up your posts, photos, and feed. In the apps for Android and iOS, tap your avatar (top left), then tap the three dots and choose Activity log. From here pick Manage activity and Your posts to see everything you’ve ever posted. (You might have to use the Filters button to limit what’s shown onscreen).
Use the tick boxes on the left to select the posts you want to manage, then you’ve got two options: Archive hides the posts from everyone else on Facebook except you, while Recycle bin deletes the posts but allows you to recover them for a period of 30 days. To trash them before those 30 days are up, tap Recycle bin on the same screen, select the posts, and tap the trash icon (or the Restore button to bring them back).
On the web, open your profile, then click Manage posts under the status update box. You can then search through your posts (filtering them if needed) and select the ones you want to remove—click Next then Delete posts to confirm. As far as we can tell, this skips the recycle bin option, but this should be added to the online interface soon.
