Some people love to get birthday messages on Facebook.
Heck, the first year I was on I couldn’t figure out why no one wished me a happy birthday when my turn came. I realized I had the setting turned off (knowing a lot about reputation management can have its drawbacks).
And some people don’t.
If you’d like to hide your birthday on Facebook, here’s how to make sure all 900 of your friends aren’t notified, prompted to write on your wall, or purchase a sponsored product.
- Navigate to your profile (updated January 2016)
- Click About under your cover photo
- Click Contact and Basic Info
- Scroll down until you see your birth date, hover over Birth DATE or Birth YEAR
- Click on Edit and choose whom can see either (I have it set to Friends for Date and Only Me for Year)
*If you select Only Me for your birth DAY, no one will know it’s your birthday and you will receive no birthday wishes from your friends.
**If you select Only Me for your birth YEAR, no one will know your age.
Not showing your birthday to the entire world is a good preventative measure to take against identity theft. Now that we can piece together more and more about each other based on the sheer volume available about us online, be safe where you can.
Featured image is me blowing out my candles on my 6th birthday :)
Thank you for visiting Kerry Rego Consulting! This is my most trafficked blog EVER! Take a look at my #2 most popular blog “How to Change Your Gender on Facebook.” I’ve got lots more blogs that I’ve written on the topic of Facebook.
I’m a social media consultant and trainer so if you are in a spot of trouble, have accounts that need to be merged, or need training call me at 707-520-4572 or email me.
this does not work it absolutely does not work. I do not want my birthday on facebook. I have set the privacy setting to Only Me and the birthday STILL SHOWS. My privacy is very import ant to me and I need help to fix this please
DeborahMae, did someone tell you they can still see your birthday? I located you on FB and I can’t see it. I just sent you a friend request so that I can see what your friends see. -Kerry
oh, thank you so much!
When I hover over my name, not even on my timeline, it has my birthday !
I will confirm your friend request right now!
thank you
I’m so glad I could help!
You made my day! I was so aggravated by my birthday showing that I was thinking of cancelling my page. You really helped me!
I’m so happy to have made a difference in your day! Take care and feel free to ask me any other questions you have here or on my FB page https://www.facebook.com/kerryregoconsulting – Be well.
Sorry, this is the standard answer on Facebook sites, and it doesn’t work.
Tony, I get 3-4 comments on this blog per week and it’s 50/50. It works for a lot of people, I’m sorry it’s not working for you.
This is a quote from the blog I wrote “I found the following instructions in a Facebook Community thread, tried it, and it worked!”
Hi! I don’t want to hide my birthday, if somebody wants to know can view it on my profile. BUT: I do not want facebook send reminders to my contacts about my birthday. Is it possible?
That’s the setting that turns off the notifications being sent. I double checked. What you can do is hide your birthday during the week it occurs (I always get some the day before and the day after) and make it visible again afterwards.
Does not work. Mine are set to “only me” (both day and year), yet friends are notified. And the statement above that “it works for some but not for others” simply does not make logical sense.
David, I’m sorry to hear that it doesn’t work for you. It may seem illogical that these instructions work for the majority of people but that there are a few accounts that this simply doesn’t fix the problem. Unfortunately, application and web design (Facebook is both of these) aren’t always logical. That’s when the errors occur.
I try to change my birth date, it will take the change, but I come back and it’s changed back to original date. How do I cHange to make it stay?
Sarah, have you tried logging out of Facebook, logging back in, then changing your birthdate settings? Sometimes this helps.
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Please, I don’t want friends to be notified that my birthday has come. I don’t need the birthday wishes. What will I do?
Henry, did you try the instructions in the blog?
Thanks for this info. I’m trying it now (06/05/2020). B-day is 06/07. I don’t care if people see my b-day on my profile, I just don’t want all my friends to receive notices about it. For gawds sake, everyone has a b-day. Why are they such a “biggie”. As a secondary measure, I changed my b-day to 06/09. Facebook does warn that you can only change your b-day a certain number of times. (I’m smelling a class action lawsuit on this.) Cheers.
Those wishes really rattle people that don’t like aging! And thanks for the reminder about the times you can change your birth date.