Facebook Fatigue

If someone came up to you on the street and asked you for personal information would you give it to them? And what if they asked about your daily schedule, your friends, your work, your favourite shops, restaurants and holiday spots? How about if they wanted to know which books you read or what kinds of meals you like? Would you find that a little unsettling? Would you at least ask why this person wanted this information? And what if they said that they wanted to sell this information onto someone else that you’d never met. Putting to aside privacy issues and business models, many of which essentially take information about you and render it into money by selling it to someone else, there’s the issue of peer pressure. With Facebook, for example, there is pressure not only to be on the site and constantly update what you are doing, but to always be ‘up’ and looking good. No wonder people are leaving such sites. A poll by YouGov last year found that in the UK Facebook use had fallen by 9% over the 12-months to March 2013, while in Australia 400,000 people left Facebook during the first 4 months of 2013. Facebook ‘Likes’ are also starting to feel stale, especially when companies are openly offering discounts to people if they ‘like’ their page. Sales promotion by a different name. There’s also the cool factor or, if you prefer, Facebook’s MySpace moment. Now that so many parents have signed up to Facebook to spy on their kids, many kids have moved onto the likes of Snapchat.