According to a Dec. 13, 2011 NYTimes.com article, Shunning Facebook and Living to Tell About It ,there’s a Facebook fade happening out there that might just turn the tide on Facebook. After all, as the article reports, “The number of Americans who visited Facebook grew 10 percent in the year that ended in October — down from 56 percent growth over the previous year, according to comScore, which tracks Internet traffic.”
The question is whether the “cool” kids (as the Atlantic Wire called them in a follow up article, All the Cool Kids Are Quitting Facebook) are a bellwether for whether Facebook will end up in the gutters like its nearly out of work cousin, My Space. One interviewee from the NYTimes article reminds us that 16% of Americans don’t have cellphones, so it could be that the ones holding out on Facebook are a norm to expect.
That a silver trumpet newspaper like the NYTimes would hype up a percentage platitude seems beneath one of their caliber, and the ones interviewed for the article makes some pretty good points about why they quit Facebook. After reading source quotes from both articles, it seems people are tired of letting Facebook take the place of meaningful and real communication between friends. Facebook alienates more than it connects. Americans are worried about losing their privacy to Facebook, and some people just find it weird to know so much about people they’ve never met or those they don’t want to feel they’re spying on. And who wants to waste time amassing “virtual clutter” anyway?
Will you be the next Facebook dropout–Why or why not?
