I read “it’s dying” by people on Discord and Reddit all the time, but the numbers prove otherwise. It’s been going up this entire time and sitting over 3 billion MONTHLY ACTIVE USERS!
I feel like the bubble around people on other platforms saying “who uses Facebook anymore lol” is kind of wild given the numbers. Keep in mind these are active users not just abandoned accounts.
I use Facebook. I am not in touch with very many of my relatives. The few that I am in touch with are all on Facebook. I also live a significant distance from pretty much all of my friends and that’s a way I can keep in touch with them. On top of that, my brother, who is on the spectrum, prefers to communicate with me that way. In fact, I would probably never hear from him until my mother died if I didn’t because he’s never called or emailed me.
But… here is how I use Facebook: I only follow select friends and relatives who aren’t too annoying- which means following about 10-15 people and unfollowing all the others, I tell it every time I see an ad I never want to see again, and I am only in groups that are either small and personally significant to me (like the group for my relatives) and a couple of others that I mostly just look at and don’t participate in.
No arguments, no political unpleasantness, nothing that makes me angry or upset unless something bad is happening to someone I care about, and honestly it’s not unpleasant. I think I’ve maybe blocked three people the entire time I’ve been on Facebook and all three did something personal to me offline that made me decide to cut off contact with them.
Sure, they’re hoovering up my data, but so is everyone else.