Pew Research Center studied the habits of United States Facebook users, specifically after the outbreak of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, and found that almost half of users who aged 18 to 29 had deleted the mobile app from their phones.
The Pew survey was conducted from May 29 through June 11, two months after a Cambridge Analytica fiasco came to light in March.
Read More: Cambridge Analytica Is Shutting Down For Facebook Data Scandal
The research group asked respondents if they had done one of three things with their Facebook accounts in the previous year: adjusted their privacy settings, taken a break for at least “several weeks,” or fully removed the Facebook app from their mobile devices.
74 percent of respondents, regardless of age, had done at least one of those things in the prior year. The aforementioned youngest age group was the most likely to have done any of them, with 44 percent reporting they had deleted Facebook entirely.
Read More: Taking a break from Facebook will help you to reduce stress
Just over half of Facebook users ages 18 and older in the U.S. (54%) say they have adjusted their privacy settings in the past 12 month. https://t.co/GuHFulrMBK pic.twitter.com/H3MxJkeMnN
— Pew Research Fact Tank (@FactTank) September 5, 2018
64 percent of the 18 to 29 group had changed their privacy settings, while 47 percent had taken a break. In contrast, just 12 percent of respondents aged 65 or higher had deleted Facebook in the past year.
Read More: Facebook Gets Money From Selling Your Data
Pew’s newest data backs up several other recent reports about younger users’ Facebook habits. Only two years ago, Facebook was the preferred app for teens in the U.S. However, earlier this year, a separate Pew study found that only around half of U.S. teens used Facebook at all in 2018.
Instead, young users tended to gravitate to more visually oriented platforms like Instagram, Snapchat and YouTube. For what it is worth, Facebook owns Instagram.
