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May 16, 2025
Being blocked on any social media platform and especially Facebook, can be perplexing, and determining whether you have been blocked or the other person has just deactivated their account can be difficult.
I’m going to dive deep and look at all of the ways you can get out of this bind and feel relieved!
There are numerous techniques for truly discovering this, like doing a Facebook search, checking recent conversations, trying to tag them in posts, or researching from a different account.
Let’s look more closely at each of these methods:
In my experience, I have always seen this method working the most. It is actually one of the best tried-and-true methods among the 4.
Here the steps are pretty simple; you just have to see if the person’s profile exists when searched from a different account.
You can open a secondary account or ask any of your mutual friends to run a fast Facebook search for the person’s profile; if the profile appears on other accounts, it’s quite clear that they have blocked you. If you can’t discover their account using other handles, they’ve most likely just deactivated their account.
A search is the quickest way to find out if someone is on the Facebook app. Simply enter the person’s name into the search bar and do a quick search.
You will either not find the person in search suggestions or, if you do, you will be unable to see their Facebook profile. If you receive the notice “Sorry, this content isn’t available right now.” This could mean one of two things: you’ve been blocked or the person has deactivated their account!
Simply go to your most recent chats and try tapping on the person’s profile picture to check if you can access their account. In the case that their profile doesn’t load, there’s a significant probability that they may have blocked you or the person has deactivated their account.
You will notice a “Red error” warning flashing on your screen if you attempt to text them using the platform, indicating that you cannot drop them a text.
If someone blocks you on Facebook, you can’t tag them, therefore another option is to make a post and try to tag the person you’re looking for.
When you make a post, you will get an option to tag people in it. A list will appear on your screen from which you can search for that person’s username. If their name does not appear, it means that they have either deactivated their account or blocked you.
It can be very cognitively taxing to think about it and speculate as to why you think you have been blocked on the Facebook messenger app. The signs of blocking and deactivating accounts can sometimes be the same, though.
When someone blocks you on Facebook messenger, a notification stating “You cannot react to this conversation anymore” will appear at the bottom of your screen and you won’t be able to send them a message.
Even if you are given the option to send the message, it won’t go through, and a red error sign will appear on your screen.
People occasionally want to step away from social media for unwinding and take a break from the social world, and that’s when deactivating an account is useful.
When a Facebook user deactivates their account, it’s more like they are taking a break from the site as at that time, their Facebook account will be completely invisible.
You won’t be able to view that person’s timeline or their Facebook feed if you search for the person’s name as their profile won’t appear on your screen.
However, you can still view their comments on your posts and other places even though you can’t search their profile. As Facebook will no longer have a link to your account, their name will just be shown as plain text. Additionally, I’ve also noticed that Facebook will swap out their profile picture with a generic icon.
The main distinction between deactivating a Facebook account and account deletion is that when an account is deleted, it more closely resembles a permanent change to the platform. Once an account is deleted, it is impossible to get access to it again.
It’s not a given that if someone deactivates their account, they’ll also stop using messenger. Facebook provides a feature where users can deactivate their accounts and still use the Facebook messaging app’s messenger to communicate with their friends.
Source: Facebook
Checking their messenger account is the easiest approach to confirm and ensure.
When someone deactivates both their Facebook account and Messenger, you can still view their prior conversations in their chat window, but you won’t be able to send them any new messages.
On the bottom of your screen, you’ll notice a notification that says “You cannot reply to this chat,” indicating that you will be unable to send them any Facebook messages.
In the event that you don’t see that notice, feel free to message them and engage in conversation on the platform to confirm that they haven’t yet disabled Messenger.
In other words, according to my observation when someone deactivated their Facebook account, it doesn’t necessarily mean they stopped using Messenger. There is no connection between them!