A session management method by a terminal in which a network initiates a session deactivation procedure to deactivate one or more sessions of a terminal. After the terminal in an inactive mode establishes an RRC connection to a new second base station, the second base station indicates, through RRC connection reconfiguration, the terminal to delete related information of the to-be-deactivated session, or the second base station uses an RRC connection resume response message to carry an identifier of the one or more to-be-deactivated sessions, and the terminal deletes session-related information corresponding to the identifier of the one or more to-be-deactivated sessions. In this way, the terminal is enabled to process the related information of the to-be-deactivated session in a timely manner.