More than half of regular Facebook users have reportedly taken a break from the social networking site. Does this mean the end is nearing for Facebook?
Pew Internet Project released a report Thursday which stated that 61 percent of Facebook's users have reportedly taken a break from the social networking site at some point in time or the other and 21 percent of these users have said that they intend spending lesser time on Facebook henceforth.
Moreover, one fifth of the people surveyed, who are Internet savvy but not Facebook users currently, revealed that they did sign up on the social networking site but soon left it and have no plans for returning.
Facebook has been criticized in the past over privacy issues, making use of the user's personal information for advertising purposes and also for forcing users to accept unnecessary changes on the website. Surprisingly, none of these were reasons given for quitting the site, researchers found.
One of the top reasons people gave when asked why they plan on deserting the site was that it takes up too much time. 21 percent of the users said that they were too busy to waste precious time on the site.
"It takes up too much time because I let it, but I'm slowly weaning myself off it," Facebook user Robert Lopes, 63, told TechNewsWorld. "I want real time with friends and family."
Another 10 percent said that they weren't interested or didn't like the site while another 10 percent said the content on the website wasn't relevant to what they were looking for on a social networking site.
Only 4 percent of the users had concerns about the security issues of the website.
"Those are not front-of-mind concerns," Aaron Smith, a Pew research associate who worked on the survey, told TechNewsWorld.
"By far, the main reasons were either things going on in their lives that prevented them from doing Facebook stuff, or things the people on Facebook were saying or doing, rather than things intrinsic to the site itself," Smith added.
