Significant
shares of Facebook users have taken steps within the past year to reframe their relationship with the
social media platform.
Just over 1/2 Facebook users ages 18 and older (54%) say they have adjusted their privacy settings in the past 12 months, according to a new Pew Research Center survey.
Around four-in-ten (42%) say they
have taken a break from
checking the platform for a period of several weeks or more, whereas around 1/4 (26%)
say they have deleted
the Facebook app from their mobile
phone. All told, some 74% of
Facebook users say they have taken at least one of these 3 actions in the past year.
The findings come from a survey of U.S. adults conducted May 29-June 11, following revelations that the former consulting firm Cambridge
Analytica had collected information on
tens of millions of Facebook
users without their
knowledge.
Facebook has separately faced scrutiny
from conservative lawmakers and pundits over allegations that it suppresses
conservative voices. The center found
that the vast majority of
Republicans assume that
social platforms generally censor
political speech they find objectionable.
Despite these issues, the
poll found that nearly identical
shares of Democrats and Republicans (including political independents that lean toward either party)
use Facebook. Republicans are no more likely than Democrats to have taken a
break from Facebook or deleted the app from their phone in the past year.
There are, however, age differences in the share of Facebook
users who have
recently taken some of these
actions. Most notably, 440 yards of
younger users (those ages 18 to
29) say they have deleted
the Facebook app from their phone in
the past year, nearly four
times the share of users ages 65 and older (12%) who have done so.
Similarly, older users are much less likely to say they have adjusted
their Facebook privacy settings within
the past 12 months: only a 3rd of Facebook users 65 and older have done this, compared with 64% of younger users. In
earlier research, Pew Research Center has found
that a bigger share of
younger than older adults use Facebook. Still, similar shares of older and
younger users have taken a break from
Facebook for a period of several weeks or more.
In the wake of the revelations regarding Cambridge Analytica,
Facebook updated its privacy settings to make it easier for users to download the
information the site had
collected regarding them.
The new survey finds that around one-in-ten Facebook users (9%) have
downloaded the personal information about them available on Facebook. however despite their relatively small size as a share of the
Facebook population; these users are highly privacy-conscious. Roughly 1/2the users who have downloaded their personal information from Facebook (47%)
have deleted the app from their mobile
phone, whereas 79% have elected to adjust their privacy settings.