Facebook started out as a way to connect and stay connected with friends and loved ones, and quickly morphed into the world’s foremost platform for bigots and fake news.

To up the irritation factor, if you don’t go on to the social network for five minutes, it bombards you with notifications, reprimands and “questions” like “would you like to boost this post?”

What about now? And now? How about now?”

Post? Boost? Now?

With all of this and everything else that they’ve done, it should come as no surprise that Facebook has lost 15 million users in the US alone since 2017.

Here’s a breakdown of the data in a recent report by Edison Research:

According to Moneycontrol, people are leaving Facebook at an alarming rate.

According to the report, 79 percent of users in age group of 12 to 34 used Facebook in 2017 but the figure has now declined to 62 percent. Meanwhile, the user share in the 35-54 age bracket has come down to 69 percent from 72 percent in 2017.

Interestingly, the share of people aged 55 and above using Facebook has gone up…Users aged 55 years and above increased from 49 percent to 53 percent between 2018 and 2019.

In other words, as this graph aptly illustrates, Facebook is fast becoming the retirement home of social media:

Despite the exodus, Facebook remains the most popular social networking platform, followed by YouTube, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger and Instagram, but that could change.

With more specific apps coming up such as YouTube for music, Snapchat for stories and Instagram for posting pictures, users are signing up for them for a different experience. Over 70 percent of the US population within 12-34 years were reported having used YouTube specifically for music in a week, as per the Edison Research.

There has also been a rise in the percentage of Americans who listen to online audio (defined as listening to AM/FM radio stations online and/or listening to streamed audio content available only on the internet). In the US, such an audience has doubled since 2012, growing from one-third of the population to two-thirds.

Still, while a few million left the social network, as many as 2,27 billion users remain on the platform worldwide, so they probably aren’t going anywhere anytime soon.

[source:moneycontrol]