When Was an Instagram Account Created? How to Check

Quick answer

For your own account, the answer is easier. It's in your account history.

The official screen for this

Instagram added a screen called About This Account back in 2018.

I read Instagram's announcement of it. For accounts that reach large audiences, About This Account shows the date the account joined, the country where it's located, accounts with shared followers, username changes in the last year and any ads it's running.

The join date is exactly what you're after. It's the only official way to see it on someone else's account.

How to open it

It takes three taps in the app.

1. 1Go to the account's profile.
2. 2Tap the three dot menu in the top corner.
3. 3Choose About This Account.

If the option is there, the join date appears near the top of the screen.

If you don't see the option at all, the account probably doesn't reach a large enough audience to have it. That's common for personal accounts.

Why some accounts don't have it

Instagram's announcement ties the feature to accounts that reach large audiences. It doesn't publish an exact follower threshold.

The reasoning was about transparency for influential accounts. People wanted to know more about accounts sharing news or political content with many followers.

So a friend with a few hundred followers usually won't have the screen. A brand, a public figure or a big meme page usually will.

A missing screen isn't a warning sign. It just means the account is small.

Checking your own account

Your own account's age is simple to find.

Open your profile, go to Your activity, and look for Account history. It lists changes you've made to your account over time. Scroll to the very bottom, and the oldest entry takes you back to when the account was set up.

If you'd rather have a file, you can also request a download of your information through Accounts Center.

Both only work for accounts you can log in to.

The oldest post trick

For small accounts without About This Account, you're left with clues.

Scroll to the bottom of the profile grid and open the oldest post. Its date tells you the account existed by then.

That's all it tells you, though. People often create an account long before their first post. Others delete or archive their early posts, which moves the oldest visible date forward.

So treat it as "at least this old", never as the creation date.

Archived posts change the picture

Archiving is the big reason the oldest post trick misleads.

When someone archives a post, it disappears from their public grid but isn't deleted. Only they can see it.

Many people archive old posts when they rebrand or clean up their profile. An account that looks two years old might really be ten.

Our guide on who can still see an archived Instagram post explains how archiving works.

Highlights hold older clues

Highlights are worth a look too.

Stories saved to a highlight stay on the profile long after the usual 24 hours. Some highlights go back years.

Open the oldest looking highlight and check the dates on its stories. It can show activity older than anything left on the grid.

For public accounts, the PeekStories viewer opens highlights without logging in, so you can check them without your account appearing anywhere.

Tagged posts and old comments

Other people's posts can reveal an account's age too.

Open the tagged tab on a public profile. Photos where friends tagged the account can go back further than its own grid.

Old comments help in the same way. If you know a friend posted years ago and this account commented, that comment dates the account.

None of this is exact. But together, the clues build a rough timeline.

What about age checker sites?

Search for an Instagram account age checker and you'll find plenty of sites.

Some read the public About This Account data. Others make an estimate from the account's internal ID number, since newer accounts tend to have higher numbers. That's a guess, not a date.

Be careful with any site that asks you to log in with Instagram. Checking someone else's account age never needs your password.

If a site wants payment for a date, it's selling an estimate you can make yourself.

Why account age matters

Most people check account age for one of a few reasons.

The common one is trust. A brand new account claiming to be an old brand or a well known person is a warning sign.

Another is scams. Fake accounts are often only days or weeks old when they start messaging people.

And sometimes it's plain curiosity about when a friend joined.

Our guide on how to spot a fake Instagram account uses the join date as one of its main checks.

The username changes line

About This Account shows one more thing worth reading next to the date: username changes in the last year.

An old account with a new name isn't always suspicious. People rebrand.

But an old account that recently switched to a famous brand's name should make you pause. Some scammers buy aged accounts precisely because an older join date looks trustworthy.

So don't trust the date alone. Read it together with the name history.

Shared followers add context

The same screen lists accounts with shared followers. It's easy to skip, and it's useful.

If an account says it's a local business, you'd expect it to share followers with other local accounts. If it claims to be a friend, you'd expect mutual friends.

When the shared followers make no sense for who the account claims to be, the join date deserves a second look.

A real account usually has a circle that fits its story.

Read the country field loosely

About This Account also shows the country where the account is located.

Treat it as a rough guide. People travel, move abroad and run accounts for businesses in other places.

It helps most when it clashes with everything else. A newly joined account, a famous name and an unexpected country together tell you far more than any one of them alone.

On its own, a surprising country is just a question, not an answer.

Deactivated and deleted accounts

If an account was deactivated, it disappears while it's switched off. You can't check anything until it's back.

When it returns, it usually keeps its original join date. Deactivation pauses an account, it doesn't restart it.

A deleted account is different. Once it's gone for good, its history goes with it. A new account under the same name is a new account.

Our guide on what happens when you deactivate Instagram covers the details.

Can people see when you joined?

The same rules apply to you.

If your account reaches a large audience, anyone can open About This Account and see your join date and country. You can check what shows by opening the screen on your own profile.

If your account is small, people only have the clues above: your oldest post, highlights and tags.

Making your account private hides all of those from strangers.

What to do now

Try the methods in this order.

1. 1Open About This Account on the profile.
2. 2If it's missing, check the oldest post and highlights.
3. 3Look at the tagged tab for older activity.
4. 4For your own account, use Account history.

I checked the fields on that screen against Instagram's 2023 update note on the same announcement page, so they match what the app shows today.

If only the clues are available, treat the answer as a minimum age, not a birthday.