Facebook, Twitter usage dropped in the UK: Survey

According to the YouGov Sixth Sense Social Media report Facebook and Twitter usage has dropped to 9 percent and 10 percent respectively in the UK. The reasons for this drop range from the loss of interest to privacy concerns and growing social-media advertising. This has resulted in one-in-every ten social media users to stop using their Facebook and twitter accounts in the past one year.

The report questioned 2217 active UK social media users in February about seven major social media sites. According to the report 55 percent of the people said that they lost interest in social media websites, which should be a grave concern for the social media companies. Around 26 percent said that they were concerned about the privacy policies followed by these companies following the recent reports about governments performing mass surveillance. One in five of the 21 percent of people said that they were fed up with the incessant advertising used on these sites, which forms the revenue strategy for most of these websites. Another one in six of the 17 percent said that they did not like third parties having access to their personal content.

Facebook still has time to rectify this drop as it is still leading with 86 percent of active social media users using its service. Next in line and competition, Youtube consists of 46 percent of active users. Twitter comes in third place with 32 percent of active social media users. Instagram and Pinterest share 9 percent and 6 percent respectively of the active social media users.

Instagram and Pinterest, in spite of its low rate of penetration,  have grown significantly popular among the masses. Three in ten Pinterest users have joined the site in the last six months leading up to the survey out of which almost half of these users joined in the month before the research was conducted. Similarly over one in five users joined Instagram in the last six months leading up to the survey with third of these joining a month before the survey was conducted.

The report said children between the ages of 8 and 15 years showed YouTube to be the most popular website used by them where more than 4 in ten log on to the video streaming website regularly. Facebook is second most popular in this age group and is followed by Instagram and Snapchat. Just one in ten children were active on Twitter making it the least favourite social media website in that age bracket.

The report suggests the probable cause for Facebook and Twitter to be unpopular among children is driven by an assumption that the children in that age bracket believe that social media services are more suited for adults. 32 percent of the children believe that Facebook is for the grownup audience, while 30 percent feel the same about twitter. Other social media services came in at 15 percent for the same reason.

Young people are also more alert to privacy issues on Facebook and more likely to protect themselves from restricting access to unknown profiles. 84 percent believe it is important to restrict access to their profiles while 14 percent think it is not important. The girls in UK constitute significantly large in numbers who restrict access to their accounts.