You can reduce suggestions significantly — but not eliminate them entirely
Facebook’s People You May Know feature surfaces suggested friends constantly — in your feed, in the sidebar, in notifications, and on a dedicated page.
The suggestions are generated from mutual friends, shared networks, contact lists, location data, and browsing behavior.
You can’t completely disable friend suggestions — Facebook doesn’t provide a single off switch for the feature — but you can significantly reduce them through a combination of privacy settings, data controls, and direct dismissal.
Here’s every lever available.
Why Facebook Suggests Friends
Facebook’s friend suggestion algorithm draws from several data sources simultaneously:
Mutual connections — people who share multiple mutual friends with you are the most common suggestion source.
Phone contacts — if you’ve given Facebook access to your contacts, everyone in your phone’s address book who has a Facebook account gets surfaced as a suggestion.
Email contacts — same principle if you’ve connected an email account.
Location data — people who frequent the same places as you, based on location history.
Networks — people who attended the same school, work at the same company, or belong to the same groups as listed on your profile.
Browsing and app data — people whose profiles you’ve visited or who have visited yours, plus off-Facebook behavioral data.
Knowing which of these applies to you points to the most effective fixes.
Remove Facebook’s Access to Your Phone Contacts
If you ever gave Facebook permission to access your contacts, this is likely the biggest driver of unwanted friend suggestions. Facebook scans your entire contact list and suggests everyone in it who has a Facebook account — including old contacts, business contacts, and people you’d rather not connect with on social media.
On iPhone: Go to Settings → Privacy and Security → Contacts and find Facebook in the list. Toggle it off. This removes Facebook’s ongoing access to your contacts.
On Android: Go to Settings → Apps → Facebook → Permissions → Contacts and revoke the permission.
Remove already-uploaded contacts from Facebook: Go to facebook.com/invite/manage/contacts on desktop. If Facebook has previously uploaded your contacts, you’ll see an option to remove them. Click Remove All Contacts or equivalent. This deletes the uploaded contact data Facebook has stored and removes those contacts from your suggestion pool.
Turn Off Contact Syncing in the Facebook App
Separate from the device-level permission, the Facebook app has its own contact sync setting that may have been enabled during setup.
Open the Facebook app and go to Settings and Privacy → Settings. Look for Media and Contacts or Contact Importing in the settings list. Find the setting that controls whether Facebook uploads your contacts and disable it. Also look for Sync Contacts specifically and turn it off.
Reduce Location Data
Facebook uses location to suggest people who frequent the same places. Limiting location access reduces this signal.
On iPhone: Go to Settings → Privacy and Security → Location Services → Facebook and change it from Always to While Using the App or Never.
On Android: Go to Settings → Apps → Facebook → Permissions → Location and restrict it.
Also go to Settings → Location within the Facebook app itself and turn off any location history features.
Make Your Friend List Private
When your friend list is public or visible to friends of friends, Facebook uses it to generate suggestions for others — showing them your friends as people they might know, which in turn generates reverse suggestions back to you. Making your friend list private reduces the network mapping that feeds the suggestion algorithm.
Go to Settings and Privacy → Settings → Privacy → How People Find and Contact You. Find Who can see your friends list and change it to Only Me or Friends.
Remove or Minimize Profile Information
School, workplace, hometown, and other profile fields are used for network-based suggestions. The more specific your profile information, the more effectively Facebook maps you into networks and suggests connections within them.
If reducing friend suggestions matters more than having complete profile information, consider removing or limiting who can see specific profile fields. Go to your profile → Edit Profile and adjust visibility settings or remove information from fields that generate unwanted suggestions — workplace, education, hometown.
Clear Off-Facebook Activity
Facebook uses data from third-party websites and apps to build a profile of your behavior and connections. This data contributes to friend suggestions in ways that aren’t always obvious — visiting someone’s business website, using a connected app, or browsing certain content can create connection signals.
Go to Settings → Your Facebook Information → Off-Facebook Activity. Click Clear Previous Activity and then Disconnect Future Activity from specific apps and websites. This removes the accumulated behavioral data Facebook has collected from outside the platform and disconnects future data collection.
Dismiss Individual Suggestions
For suggestions that keep reappearing, dismissing them directly signals to Facebook that you’re not interested in that specific person.
Go to facebook.com/people/suggested or find a suggestion in your feed. Click the X or Remove button next to each suggestion. When prompted for a reason, selecting I don’t know this person or Not interested tells the algorithm to stop suggesting that person and to reduce similar suggestions.
Consistent dismissal over time genuinely shifts Facebook’s suggestions toward fewer and more relevant recommendations.
Leave Groups and Unlike Pages That Generate Suggestions
Active participation in Facebook groups is a strong suggestion signal — Facebook suggests other group members as people you might know. If you’re in groups you don’t actively participate in, leaving them removes a data point Facebook uses for suggestions.
Similarly, liking pages with smaller, specific audiences can lead to suggestions of other people who liked the same pages. Auditing your liked pages and unliking ones you no longer care about reduces this signal.
Go to your profile → More → Likes to review and unlike pages. Go to Groups in the Facebook menu and leave groups you’re no longer active in.
Block People You Don’t Want Suggested
For specific individuals you definitely don’t want to see suggested — an ex, an estranged family member, a former colleague — blocking is the most definitive solution. Blocked people never appear in your friend suggestions and you never appear in theirs.
Go to their profile, click the three dots, and select Block. Blocking has broader effects than just removing suggestions — they can’t see your profile, contact you, or interact with your content — but it’s the most complete solution for specific unwanted suggestions.
What You Can’t Control
Being fully honest about the limitations: Facebook doesn’t provide a master toggle to disable People You May Know entirely. The feature is core to Facebook’s network growth strategy and the company has designed it to be persistent.
Some suggestion vectors are also outside your direct control. If mutual friends have uploaded their contact lists and you’re in them, Facebook knows about the connection regardless of whether you’ve uploaded your own contacts. If people have visited your profile, that signal exists even if you’ve never visited theirs.
The controls above reduce suggestions significantly — particularly removing contact access and clearing off-Facebook activity — but they don’t eliminate suggestions entirely. The realistic goal is making them less frequent and less pointed at people you’d prefer not to connect with.
A Quick Checklist
Work through these for the most impact:
- Remove contact permission on iPhone and Android device settings
- Delete uploaded contacts at facebook.com/invite/manage/contacts
- Turn off contact syncing in Facebook app settings
- Restrict location access to While Using or Never
- Make your friend list private in privacy settings
- Clear Off-Facebook Activity in Facebook Information settings
- Dismiss individual suggestions with “Not interested” feedback
- Leave inactive groups that generate member suggestions
- Block specific individuals you never want suggested
The Bottom Line
Facebook friend suggestions can’t be turned off completely — there’s no single setting that disables People You May Know. But removing contact access, clearing off-Facebook activity, making your friend list private, and consistently dismissing unwanted suggestions together reduce them significantly.
The contact list removal is the highest-impact single change — if Facebook has your contacts, it’s generating suggestions from everyone in your phone. Removing that access and deleting previously uploaded contacts eliminates the biggest source of unwanted suggestions for most people.
Facebook will always suggest friends — but it suggests them based on data you can limit. Take away the data and the suggestions become fewer and less precise.
Meet Ry, “TechGuru,” a 36-year-old technology enthusiast with a deep passion for tech innovations. With extensive experience, he specializes in gaming hardware and software, and has expertise in gadgets, custom PCs, and audio.
Besides writing about tech and reviewing new products, he enjoys traveling, hiking, and photography. Committed to keeping up with the latest industry trends, he aims to guide readers in making informed tech decisions.