Effective Ways to Block Facebook on Android

Tech Lockdown Team

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Updated December 11, 2024

If you've decided to quit Facebook, a good start is to deactivate your account and uninstall the app. However, the problem with stopping there is that it's easy to reinstall the app from the Google Play store and reactivate your Facebook account. A better strategy is to block Facebook completely on your Android smartphone, both by preventing the app from being reinstalled and blocking access to the website and app.

Here are a few considerations to make when deciding how to block Facebook on Android:

1. Block the Facebook app on your Android device, but allow access on your computer.
2. Limit when Facebook can be accessed to a specific schedule.
3. Use Facebook Messenger, but block the Facebook app and website.
4. Blocking Facebook 24/7 on all devices that you use, but not for other people in your household who can safely use Facebook.
   

Let's start by taking a look at how you can block both the Facebook website and app. There are a few blocking methods you can use and you can actually combine each one for a more robust blocking system:

1. Use a DNS Filter to block the Facebook app and website.
2. Use built-in Android features to limit Facebook.
3. Leverage a Mobile Device Manager for more stricter control over the Google Play Store and app blocklists.

Strategies for Blocking the Facebook App and Website on Android

If you are taking a break or quitting Facebook completely, you should start by uninstalling the app and de-activating your Facebook profile .

Unfortunately, it's easy to go through the account recovery process. In fact, if you've gone through this process before, reinstalling the app might prompt you to recover your Facebook account.

You can combine this with blocking the Facebook app and website on your Android device. We recommend using a DNS filter to do this for a few reasons:

1. Block Facebook on other devices, not just your Android smartphone.
2. Block both the Facebook app and mobile website accessed through the web browser on your phone.
3. Prevent easy changes to the DNS content policy that would bypass your blockrule.

You can achieve this using Tech Lockdown, which lets you set a DNS Content Policy to completely disable both the Facebook app and website on your Android smartphone by creating a block rule.

If you connect your DNS Content Policy  to your Android device, then the rules that you set in your Content Policy will start taking effect. You can also customize your rules further to block other social media apps; while allowing access to social media you use for professional reasons:

Using a DNS content policy doesn't prevent you from reinstalling the app, but the Facebook app won't be able to connect to the internet.

You can combine this DNS approach with some other blocking methods that work alongside it:

1. Use Android built-in parental controls to set low time limits (such as 1 minute a day).
2. Use Family Link to block an app from your Android smartphone.
3. Enable Managed Mode on your Android smartphone and add the app to a strict blocklist and use the Android web content filter to block facebook.

Most Android devices have parental controls included in Digital Wellbeing and parental controls. By combining these settings with DNS filtering, you can have multiple layers of protection on your smartphone.

On Google Pixel phones and Samsung phones, you can find parental control options offered by Google in the device's general settings.

Here, you can add an app limit for Facebook that limits your usage of the app to the lowest possible value (for most smartphones, this is one minute). 

If you want to use parental controls to block the Facebook app instead, you will have to set up and install Family Link . Unfortunately, this also means you will have at least two Google accounts, one to act as a parent and other as a child. 

Family Link might be a good option for families, but we don't believe it's a good option if you're self-managing. It's not just because you'd need multiple Google accounts, there are other reasons:

• In order for any kind of app limits to be enabled for a child Google account, the age set for the account must be less than 13 years old.
• Child accounts can leave Family Link relatively easily, so even if you did get it set up correctly, it's easy to undo.

For those interesting in setting up an effective blocking system, we strongly recommend enabling managed mode on your Android devices instead. Managed mode lets you create your own blocklist of apps for Android .

Turning your standard Android device into a managed device allows you to unlock other features; features that aren't possible with a standard device:

• Prevent an app from being uninstalled (this is perfect if you want to prevent a content filtering app from being uninstalled).
• Remotely install and uninstall apps.

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Strategies for Scheduling When You Can Use Facebook

Instead of blocking Facebook all the time, you might consider scheduling when you can use the platform. The best way to do this is with a scheduled rule.

If you've connected your Android smartphone to your DNS Content Policy , then you can use the Tech Lockdown dashboard to enforce these downtimes.

Your  DNS content policy will apply to all devices with the filtered installed by default. This is helpful if you have many devices, and you want to ensure that you can't switch to your computer.

If you have multiple people in your household that need to use the Facebook at different times, you can create separate rules to apply to each person.

Another important step you can take is to lock your Tech Lockdown profile .

This prevents you from easily logging in and adjusting your DNS Content Policy Facebook block schedule. Since Facebook can be difficult to quit for some people, it's important that you consider these various bypass prevention strategies.

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Create a DNS Content Policy

Enforce content filtering rules on all your devices.

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Going Further with Bypass Prevention

When it comes to dealing with addictive Android apps like Facebook and the subsequent bad habits, we've found that a Blocking System that considers multiple factors is a better approach.

Here's what we mean by that:

1. Content Blocking is fairly easy to bypass, especially if you are self-managing. 
2. When dealing with addicting aspects of the internet, like endless scrolling Facebook feeds, some people are highly motivated to get around blockers to access the addictive content. This creates challenges for any blocking system.

In order to add significant friction to help break compulsive behaviors, we've written a definitive guide that goes through concepts like the following:

1. Go much further with bypass prevention using device management techniques to enforce restrictions on a device.
2. Increasing accountability and browsing transparency
3. Preventing uninstall of apps and browsers extensions
4. Handling common bypass methods

These step-by-step instructions are made available to Tech Lockdown members in your account dashboard in the guides section.