Facebook has long bee the 600 pound gorilla in the social media platform room. Since 2018,it seems more than a few people have been taking a break from their social media accounts especially Facebook. Despite all of this Pew Research has recently released a study that has revealed some serious facts about Facebook that you need to be aware of moving forward. This has been taken directly from the Pew study.
- Around seven-in-ten U.S. adults (69%) use Facebook, according to a survey conducted in early 2019. That’s unchanged since April 2016, but up from 54% of adults in August 2012. With the exception of YouTube – the video-sharing platform used by 73% of adults – no other major social media platform comes close to Facebook in terms of usage. Around four-in-ten U.S. adults (37%) say they use Instagram, while smaller shares say they use Pinterest, Snapchat, LinkedIn, Twitter and WhatsApp.
- Among U.S. adults who use Facebook, around three-quarters (74%) visit the site at least once a day, according to the 2019 survey. The share of adult Facebook users who visit the site at least once a day is higher than the shares of Instagram users (63%) and Snapchat users (61%) who visit those sites at least daily.
- Facebook is popular among all demographic groups, though some adults are more likely to use it than others. Three-quarters of women in the U.S. use the platform, compared with 63% of men. There are differences by education level, too: Around three-quarters (74%) of adults with a college degree or more use Facebook, compared with 61% of those who have a high school diploma or less. Around eight-in-ten (79%) of those ages 18 to 29 use Facebook – much higher than the share among those 65 and older (46%). However, the share of older Americans who use the platform has more than doubled since August 2012, when just 20% of those 65 and older said they used it.
- Around three-quarters of Facebook users are not aware that the site lists their traits and interests for advertisers. Facebook makes it relatively easy for its users to find out how the site’s algorithm has categorized their personal traits and interests for advertisers: This information can be accessed via the platform’s “Your ad preferences” page. But 74% of adult Facebook users in the U.S. were not aware that the site collects this information about them until they were directed to this page as part of a Pew Research Center study conducted in September and October 2018.
-Written by Kevin Sawyer
