Survey of US adults: 42% took a break from Facebook for several weeks or more, 26% deleted app from their phone, 54% adjusted privacy settings in past 12 months
or breaking up with — Facebook Rachel Kaser / The Next Web : It turns out lots of people actually did #DeleteFacebook Aaron Smith / Pew Research Center : Many Facebook users don't understand how the site's news feed works Chris Welch / The Verge : More people are taking Facebook breaks and deleting the app from their phones Karl Bode / Motherboard : 44 Percent of Americans 18-27 Have Deleted the Facebook App This Year, Poll Finds Daniel Wolfe / PaymentsSource : 9.6.18 Your morning briefing Andrew Hutchinson / Social Media Today : New Study Shows Growing Number of People Taking Extended Breaks from Facebook Use Rani Molla / Recode : More than a quarter of Americans say they've deleted the Facebook app from their phones Matt Southern / Search Engine Journal : Over 25% of Facebook Users Have Deleted the App from their Phone Andy Meek / BGR : Ouch: 44 percent of younger users have deleted Facebook from their phone, Pew study finds Kif Leswing / Business Insider : More than 1 in 4 Americans have deleted the Facebook app in the past year, according to a new survey Steven Loeb / VatorNews : Pew: privacy scandals are starting to have an effect on Facebook users Natasha Lomas / TechCrunch : Facebook users becoming more cautious and critical, says Pew Tweets: Brian Fung / @b_fung : As Sheryl Sandberg prepares to testify today on Capitol Hill, new research shows 1 in 4 Facebook users have deleted the app from their phones in the past year. 42 percent say they've taken weeks-long breaks from the platform. http://www.pewresearch.org/... http://twitter.com/... @pewresearch : 44% of U.S. Facebook users ages 18 to 29 say they have deleted the app from their phone in the past year http://www.pewresearch.org/... http://twitter.com/... Vijay Shekhar / @vijayshekhar : Oh ! Is a US thing or ages and their preferences ? http://twitter.com/... Marcelo Calbucci / @calbucci : If you are trying to improve your mental health, I wrote a 12-step program for you to detox from Facebook: http://calbucci.com/... http://twitter.com/... @tsudo : Encouraging stats. Deleting FB app from my phone was really helpful to my quality of life. http://twitter.com/... Young Philip Seymour / @dontcallmeatg : In all three of these groups. Now I just need to find some time to download all my data and pull the plug for good. http://twitter.com/... Ben Bajarin / @benbajarin : Remember when people thought we were crazy when we said our data suggested 11% US consumers deleted the app? Our findings quite similar to Pew's. http://techpinions.com/... http://twitter.com/... Michael Carusi / @michaelcarusi : This is how it starts. People don't trust Facebook and haven't for a long time. Not caring about eroding trust and credibility works when you're a monolith like Facebook until it eventually doesn't. http://twitter.com/... Drew Olanoff / @yoda : the emperor(s) has no clothes. http://twitter.com/... Shira Ovide / @shiraovide : Holy cow. http://twitter.com/... Mary Branscombe / @marypcbuk : yeah, I only use facebook for messenger and through a separate app; it's not that I don't love you friends and family, it's that facebook discussions become toxic too easily http://twitter.com/... Brad Sams / @bdsams : 10/10 highly recommend removing the app from your phone...best thing i have done in 2018 http://twitter.com/... See also Mediagazer
Context & Ripple Effects
This Pew survey lands four months after a [[a:929311|Reuters/Ipsos poll found half of Facebook's US users hadn't cut back despite Cambridge Analytica]] — a gap between stated outrage and reported behavior that made 'people say they're leaving' easy to dismiss. The new numbers flip the framing: 42% report a multi-week break, 26% deleted the app, and 54% touched their privacy settings, all self-reported over just 12 months.
What makes the survey worth taking seriously is what came next in the coverage record: Nielsen data showing per-person US Facebook usage down 10% across every age bracket, eMarketer measuring daily time falling from 41 to 38 minutes, and eventually internal Facebook documents admitting teen engagement was sliding double digits. The self-reported exodus turned out to be a leading indicator, not noise.
First-order effects
- Facebook's US engagement base is thinner than its user counts suggest — a quarter of adults removed the app from their primary device, directly shrinking daily-active reach that advertisers buy against.
- The 54% who adjusted privacy settings signal rising friction around data collection, tightening the pool of behavioral signals available to Facebook's ad targeting.
Second-order effects
- Advertisers face a decaying US attention asset on Facebook's core feed, pushing budget toward whatever surface recaptures time — which is the problem Facebook's planned test of a full-screen immersive video player replacing the News Feed is built to solve.
- Rival platforms inherit the churn: Pew's later finding that 60% of recent US Twitter users had also taken a break shows break-taking becoming a normalized user behavior competitors must plan retention around, not a Facebook-specific anomaly.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds — survey-reported disengagement preceding measured usage declines — platform health metrics shift from registered users toward verified time-spent and active-usage disclosure, raising pressure from Capitol Hill and advertisers for audited engagement numbers.
- Social platforms structurally become mature, cyclical media properties in the US rather than ever-growing networks, forcing business models to monetize depth of engagement instead of user growth.
The trend: US social platform engagement is in secular decline, with self-reported user fatigue reliably foreshadowing measured drops in time spent.