Facebook has taken beating after beating over the last few months, from CEO Mark Zuckerberg berated during congressional hearings, to outcries of social media biases within the tech industry, to the Cambridge Analytica user privacy scandal, to stock market tanks. Although the tech giant is working to reform its relationship with the public, ensuring users that their information is safe and that the company is doing everything to combat disinformation, users are beginning to walk away.
According to a new Pew Research poll, 42 percent of Facebook users have taken a break from the site within in the past year, with 54 percent of users ages 18 and older “say they have adjusted their privacy settings in the past 12 months.”
Around 26 percent of users have even deleted the Facebook app from their phone.
An additional study by Pew Research states that a vast majority of self-described Republicans think that social platforms, in general, censor political speech they find objectionable.
Social media platforms like Facebook, Google, Twitter, YouTube, and others have continuously banned videos featuring guns and have rejected conservative-based advertisements like pro-life stances. Furthermore, they have skewed search results and adjusted trending online topics in favor of liberal viewpoints, which harm conservative values, many claim. Even the conservative non-profit organization Prager University, which often creates education videos, has been blocked by Facebook and YouTube. Recently, Facebook released an apology to the organization for heavily censoring its videos on the social media platform, including the complete deletion of some posts.
Regardless, the survey concludes that Republicans are no more likely than Democrats to take a break from Facebook or delete the app.
Notably, 44 percent of users ages 18 to 29 say they have deleted the Facebook app from their phone in the past year, almost four times the share of users ages 65 and older (12 percent) who have done so.
Only one-third of older Facebook users have adjusted privacy settings, whereas 64 percent of younger users have. Though, similar numbers of younger and older users have walked away from the platform for at least a period of several weeks.
