Facebook burnout: 61% of users have needed a break Around two-thirds of all online Americans use Facebook, but nearly two-thirds of those report having taken long breaks from the social network, while others have already given up on it, according to a new study from the Pew Research Center. In the study's findings published on Tuesday, 61 per cent of current Facebook users …
I remember reading such a survey a couple of years back when they found that on average 71% of the games that a gamer owns never get finished because they get bored or go to something else and forget about it.
as for FB what I've found is you really need to spend about a week off and on just killing all the stupid notifications, stuff like "So and so has invited you to play tardedville" and once you do that its just fine. I use it to stay in touch with distant relatives and for that purpose its just fine once you turn all the stupid notifications off.
But I can see why many get burnt if they don't turn those off, the thing will drive you nuts with a constant stream of drivel if you don't.
If the older users don't plan on using FB less, is that because they don't use it excessively? If a 50 year old is using it 2 hours a week then there is no reason to cut down, whereas the 20 year old using it 40 hours a week may have good reason to cut down.
Without an idea of how many hours each group is using FB, these numbers are pointless and the article simply becomes spin.
Years ago, but then created a new one - out of necessity.
The only reason, was friends, acquaintances and family. I don't follow *anyone* else. I don't have any urge to gain more followers and I post seldom.
I login about twice a week to have a quick skim, catch up with what people are up to, make an occasional comment and every once in a while, post something.
I thought that's how your supposed to use it, but as with everything, some people get addicted - to what, I'm not exactly sure? It gets dull very quickly.
"The only reason, was friends, acquaintances and family. I don't follow *anyone* else. I don't have any urge to gain more followers and I post seldom."
So you don't follow any one else other than friends, acquaintances and family. WTF? Yeah said it earlier, sharp, this guys very sharp.
I managed for years to avoid having an account and only setup one up to try and contact people I had lost touch with. I didn't use it and never posted any content.
The final straw for me was when for the second week running, people in Mexico were spending more time trying to get into my account than me.
If the other 96% was concerned about security & privacy then FB et al wouldn't be such a good place for ID theft / social engineering / OSINT research with tools like maltego.
Perhaps a big sign saying "don't use any info posted on social media as passwords or password security questions" would be big clue for at least 0.1%
So a survey shows that a % of users something up for a while and many return to it later...
Just like any addictive thing, the weak willed will return to get their regular fixes.
A friend of mine declared last May that he'd given up his job and was going to part of a crew of a yacht and sail it to S. Africa. He was a FB addict so I wondered what he would do for a FB fix.
He emailed me from Grand Canaria saying that the first week had been hard but now he didn't need a daily/hourly dose of the FB drug.
When I met him back in the UK after his trip, he said proudly, 'I'm FB Clean', going to sea was the best thing I could have done. Now he's met a fantastic lady in a Cafe where before he'd be FB'ing all the time and they are getting married in September.
Twitter is just as bad for many users.
Things like this should come with a health warning.
Why is universal medical care deemed communist but an almost universal information gathering network is not?
I hear locally that FB is full of gossip and slander, even about the partners of FB users.
The Stasi would have been in seventh heaven if FB had been around back then.
re, the Stasi - indeed as a recent suspension of firemen in Düsseldorf for quoting disparaging remarks about the mayor on Facebook illustrates.
"to those 20 per cent who say they've quit Facebook, allow this Reg reporter to extend his gnarled index finger and say: "You'll be back! Mark my words ... you'll be back!" "
or
to those 20 per cent who say they've quit Facebook, allow this Reg reporter to extend his gnarled index finger and say: "You twat! Now I look even more stupid than I did."
The trouble FB faces is that it doesn't really allow any development as a communications medium. No discussion threads, everything dropping out of site after a few hours - it doesn't really support anything more complex than gossip, kittens and promotional pages. Everyone's trapped in an endless loop.
I use Fb for networking my interests more than keeping up with friends, but you can get burnout, I recently took a year off it just to give my head enough space to get my life back together. Did the trick nicely. But it does all depend how you use it and how much you choose to let it become a part of your life.
To the person who said all Facebook users are losers, I guess you're not on it because you've no friends to find.
Use it for what it is; a comms network. That's what those old fogeys do. If your circle of friends is geographically extended, it makes a lot of sense to have a consistent private jabber space. PM threads sit outside the relentless stream of validation seeking passive aggression, spammy suggested wotsits, lame links, and fluffy kittens. Nothing complicated about including half a dozen people in a private conversation. Quality banter is still available on a more informal and geographically local level when you filter the junk that can get to to the notification bar.
If you can't be arsed to filter your content, then it shouldn't be a surprise if it kills your will to live. If you think of the way the average person consumes junk tv, they seem quite content with quantity. For a huge percentage of that audience, their we habits are pretty much the same.
*ooh!...a butterfly!"
Facebook was fun and interesting back in 2007 or so, when it was not overly commercialised. Furthermore this article points out many other reasons why I rarely use it.
For myself I consider privacy as a major reason not Facebook for anything more than a basic database of friends and basic communication such as birthday wishes. I think this survey is inaccurate on the privacy issues. Several of my FB friends do not use their complete first & last names, have deactivated their account during job searches, and have more than one account for various other privacy reasons.
...is because it's almost impossible to delete an account. Facebook refuses to delete accounts straight away, but insists on a minimum 2-week "cold turkey" period during which you must avoid the site and any of a million Facebook widgets on every other site, lest one of them inadvertently reactivates your account. Oh, and don't forget to disable it on your phone and on your tablet and on your laptop and on any services like Twitter or Google+ or Windows Live or Tweetdeck etc etc because one of those might reactivate it too.
Then, having done that (by living in a cave for a fortnight), you visit the site 4 weeks later to confirm your account is gone, and whoops you've just reactivated it.
Did The Reg miss this real FB news this week...? Two of the comments stand out :-
Facebook Is Said to Create Mobile Location-Tracking App
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-02-04/facebook-is-said-to-create-mobile-location-tracking-app.html
#1."Stalkers everywhere rejoice ... In related news, the NSA preps 1 billion friend requests.
"The app ... would run even when the program isn’t open on a handset." Spyware does that too."
#2."This is the type of information the Stasi would have killed for. It's odd that now about 2 decades after the fall of the Wall, we are now collecting more information on the private lives of every single American citizen in the name of capitalism. What many seem to forget in the rush to monetize mobile, is that there is a reason why it is written in the Constitution that every American should expect a right to privacy, because we saw what happens when that privacy is breached and those that are entrusted with that information can with a flip of a switch, use that information to subvert your very basic rights. This type of information in the wrong hands has a long history, and none of it is positive."
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