According to a study from Pew Research, about 42-percent of Americans have taken a break from Facebook in the past year, while a little over half of them have adjusted the privacy settings on their Facebook accounts. What this means is that Americans are changing the way they use Facebook and how much they trust the social media platform. Of course, this can’t be a huge surprise, considering the fact that Facebook has had a couple of really significant scandals regarding users’ information in the past year.
On top of the 42-percent that have taken a break from Facebook in the past year, around 26-percent have actually deleted Facebook from their smartphone. This makes it much easier for you to stay away from Facebook, but there are also other reasons to delete the app – simply because the app is pretty bloated and can slow down your smartphone. Pew Research found that younger Facebook users are also much more likely to adjust their privacy settings and delete the app from their phone, than older users. This is likely because younger users are a bit more tech centric and really grew up with this tech, while older users are not as savvy. These results came from people that Pew Research polled between May 29 and June 11, so at this point the results are a bit old, and have likely changed a bit.
After the Cambridge Analytica scandal happened earlier this year – which Facebook has admitted, it took way to long to address after the news broke – it also revamped its privacy settings and made it significantly easier for users to adjust different features, and have more granular control over their privacy. Facebook did also promote the privacy setting changes in different ad campaigns, which likely helped users change them when needed, and that could have skewed these numbers a tad bit.