Chart of the Day: Almost Half of Young Facebook Users Have Taken A Break From the Platform
Facebook is still the outright leader in terms of social media userbase and frequency of use. The increase has slowed but there are also other areas in which the giant has seen a change in demographical statistics. Pew Research Centre performed a survey to see how the relationship had evolved between in its 18+ US market.
The survey took place in the two months after the Cambridge Analytica scandal (May/June 2018) which means that opinions would have been affected. The most surprising stat is that 48% of people said that they have taken a break of several weeks or more within the last year. This shows that the addictive side to platform has wained from its previous heights. At one point FB said half of its users signed in every day.
64% of 18-29 year olds stated that they had updated their privacy settings within the last 12 months. Again, this will be fallout from the Cambridge Analytica scandal increasings fears of data privacy. This also saw the same age group see 44% of people saying they had deleted the app completely for a period of time.
Out of the rest of the data set, there were some more interesting takeaways. Only 9% of all respondents download all the data that Facebook held on them. 1 in 4 of all respondents had deleted the app entirely meaning their has been significant shifts in how people view the platform.
This approach to social media is likely to stay this way for sometime. Marketers need to be aware of this detachment from the userbase of Facebook when they consider using the platform. Is your target demographic young people? If so, then be careful to target correctly and with up to date user statistics.
> Source – Marketing Charts
> Respondents – 3,413 Facebook users aged 18 and older
> Recommended Resource – Free Google and Facebook Paid Media Cheatsheet