Facebook is the most widely used social media platform worldwide. It has been everywhere for the last few years, it’s existence is so long that its new social networks have thrown it aside. Facebook is now obsolete, it’s not cool as it was once before. In earlier days Facebook only focused on young users, but now it is being targeted to older generations more. It was created to inspire and connect those who use it, but the creation is now coming to an end. Facebook’s glory is now stolen by other social media platforms, people from around the world use to share pictures and videos on their profile. Today, Facebook’s spotlight has been taken by Instagram and Snapchat. The rapid emergence of Instagram and Snapchat is another solid reason with both platforms highly attractive to younger users due to their simplicity and the fact that they collect less personal information. Usage of Facebook has declined at a faster pace and the reason behind this is that the younger generation can’t relate or it is falling more for older generations. There was a historic high of 2.45 billion active users on Facebook. The global population of 32% approximately uses the social media platform and this trending line of participation is still going up.
Facebook is losing its grip on young people. The main reason people deleting Facebook is their concern over data privacy as their primary inspiration for leaving the network. The other reasons are concerns with its echo chamber effects, avoiding procrastination, avoid time-wasting, and the negative psychological effects of perpetual social comparison. The other clarifications relate more to what Facebook has become and also evolving technology traverses with personal experience. Many people find it difficult to eloquent precisely why they joined Facebook. Facebook has turned into the concept of “Oversharing”, which users find their feed congested with graciously personal and irrelevant.
The imperative reason for the achievement of social media is its talent to knock into our social instinct for knowledge sharing and exchange. On Facebook, it appears that the costs of mutual obligation (they liked my post, so I had to better like theirs) outweigh the benefits of being connected. Digital forms of mutual obligation are different from real ones – in the real world we shake hands and say nice things to each other in the moment of encounter. But in the digital world, social obligations can quickly accumulate to unsustainable levels. People who leave facebook are at one end of the spectrum we all dwell as we try and work through questions of digital personality, accountability, and collective customs.
The new generation has or we can say under-18s have shifted to Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok & Twitter. The new generation doesn’t want to be on the same social media as their parents are on. They don’t want to be tracked, don’t want to see ads, they’re afraid of online bullying and hate speech. Facebook is losing its fan following because the negative content goes viral far more reliably than positive content. Covid – 19 has made people realized that users have to work hard on building real relationships than digital connections.
Facebook is slowly turning into social media’s retirement home. Young people are quitting the social network and on the other side the older generation around age 55 is signing in. Younger consumers are particularly looking for something beyond utility. They are in search of newness and exclusivity, for the latest buzz in social media which is leading them away from Facebook. The buzz of new features and functions and the emergence of newer social platforms is the consequence of the “aging” of Facebook. Leaving social networks is one of several options we can choose as we attempt to navigate this new world. But Facebook deletion is not just a process of people redefining their digital self. Deletion is also a response to a set of emerging tensions between evolving technology and social life.