Facebook Usage Declines

42% of Facebook users say they have taken a break from checking the platform for a period of several weeks or more. 26% say they have deleted the Facebook app from their cellphone.

According to Pew Research Facebook users continue to reduce the amount of time they are spending on the platform. Just over half of Facebook users ages 18 and older (54%) say they have adjusted their privacy settings in the past 12 months, according to a new Pew Research Center survey. Around four-in-ten (42%) say they have taken a break from checking the platform for a period of several weeks or more, while around a quarter (26%) say they have deleted the Facebook app from their cellphone. All told, some 74% of Facebook users say they have taken at least one of these three actions in the past year.

The findings come from a Pew Research survey of U.S. adults conducted May 29, 2018 through June 11, 2018.

There are, however, age differences in the share of Facebook users who have recently taken some of these actions. Most notably, 44% of younger users (those ages 18 to 29) say they have deleted the Facebook app from their phone in the past year, nearly four times the share of users ages 65 and older (12%) who have done so. Similarly, older users are much less likely to say they have adjusted their Facebook privacy settings in the past 12 months: Only a third of Facebook users 65 and older have done this, compared with 64% of younger users. In earlier research, Pew Research Center has found that a larger share of younger than older adults use Facebook. Still, similar shares of older and younger users have taken a break from Facebook for a period of several weeks or more.

42 percent of the audience not using the platform should translate to fewer daily active users. More than half of the audience changing the privacy settings should mean less opportunity for accurate ad targeting, and lower efficiency of advertising on Facebook.

Full Article at Pew Research.