Connecting with friends and telling them your stories was at the heart of social networking site Facebook. That trend, though seems to be declining now as you can turn to your News feed and notice that it’s an endless barrage of clickbaity news, shared videos and less personal stuff. Now, this visible shift has been confirmed by a report in The Information that has revealed people are posting fewer personal updates to Facebook than they used to.
- The report says that overall sharing fell 5.5 percent from mid-2014 to mid-2015.
- More importantly personal updates fell 21 percent during the above timeframe.
- About 1.6 billion users are posting more news and information from other websites and less about their lives.
So, now instead of knowing what your friends are actually up to, you will see more of a funny dog video or a sarcastic Trump news piece doing the rounds. In case you are concerned, you will probably visit their profile page and scroll through all that irrelevant information to at last find a teeny-weeny information about them.
People seem reluctant to share personal news for their friends and this is a worrying thing for Facebook.
Reacting to the news, Facebook has written off this information, saying, “People continue to share a ton on Facebook; the overall level of sharing has remained not only strong, but similar to levels in prior years.”
But, we all know that’s not entirely true because our news feed is a proof of that. And don’t you think Facebook knows that very well, that’s why, over the years it has dedicated a team to figure out ways to increase personal sharing and has devised new tactics.
Remember the “On This Day” feature which was launched last year that brings up memories from past years. We found it pretty sweet, but this development was to play upon your emotions and to make sure you talk about them to your friends.
Facebook also doesn’t forget to remind you of special occasions be it Valentines Day or Mother’s Day. The recent Reactions update was also to give a boost to people to start posting more personal updates again.
What could be the possible reasons for this drift. Here’s what we think:
With the advent of new social websites, the personal sharing aspect has relocated to other platforms like Snapchat, Instagram etc. For example, when you think of posting a travel picture, won’t you prefer Insta to Facebook?
In such a troubled cyber age, users have become more careful of what they post on networking sites and most of them refrain from sharing information which they fear can be misused. One in five people also say using social media makes them depressed.
Facebook made its debut in 2004 and most of its loyal and dedicated users are the youngsters from that era. So, speaking of an average, all these users are in their late 20s to mid 30s. After 12 years, obviously so, a major percentage of it have gotten bored of the website.
Also, since Facebook became a global phenomenon, now everyone is on Facebook whether they are posting something or not, be it your mother or boss. So, you might not be comfortable sharing intimate details about your life and divulging personal information for everyone to see nor do you want to receive judgmental comments.
