Face-ing Up To Falling Numbers
Signs of decline in Facebook use are coming thick and fast.
A recent report from Edison Research into social media usage showed that the number of Facebook users in the USA had fallen back to 2015 levels.
This was the latest issue of an annual study into use by Americans aged 12 or over.
It had first included the platform as used by 8 per cent of them in 2008, which had grown to 67 per cent by 2017, but now dropped back to 62 per cent.
In May, new research from the Pew Research Center listed Facebook use amongst American teens at 51 per cent, a staggering drop from the 71 per cent recorded in a similar report in 2015.
More startling was that only 10 per cent of respondents in the latest survey said that Facebook was the social media platform they used most often. In between these reports about numbers of users came a regular probe into website usage by Shareaholic.
This revealed that in the second half of 2016, 31 per cent of visits to websites were to Facebook.
However by the final six months of last year that figure had dropped to 18 per cent.
As much of the data underpinning these reports pre-dates the breaking of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, any disillusionment with the Zuckerberg empire amongst its target audience had already crept in well beforehand.
Nevertheless, recent figures show that Facebook still has about 30 per cent more users than any other social media channel.
So, with the ongoing rise of Instagram, WhatsApp and Snapchat, maybe the market is just balancing out a bit.
Personally, though, I find Facebook somewhat bloated and far prefer simplicity of some alternatives.
I may not be alone.
