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26 Percent of Americans Give #DeleteFacebook a Try

About 26 percent of US users have deleted the Facebook app from their phone in the past year; 44 percent of US users age 18 to 29 have done so.

 & Michael Kan Principal Reporter

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Facebook had 1.47 billion daily active users as of June 2018, but at least a few need a time out from the social media behemoth.

About 26 percent of US Facebook users have uninstalled the Facebook app from their phones in the last year, according to a Pew Research Center survey.

The poll was taken from between May 29 to June 11, at a time when social media giant was still reeling from the Cambridge Analytica privacy scandal. As many as 87 million Facebook users may have had their data harvested by a UK political consultancy used by top GOP political campaigns, including President Trump's.

Pew Research Facebook Use

According to Pew, the Facebook app exodus was higher among the younger generation. "Most notably, 44 percent of younger users (those ages 18 to 29) say they have deleted the Facebook app from their phone in the past year, nearly four times the share of users ages 65 and older (12 percent) who have done so."

A larger share of Americans also appear to be abstaining from constant Facebook use; 42 percent of the respondents reported "taking a break" from checking in with Facebook for a period of several weeks or more.

The Cambridge Analytica scandal, and Facebook's attempts to address it, may have also prompted more Americans to change their privacy settings on the platform. Pew's survey found that 54 percent of the respondents had adjusted their Facebook privacy preferences.

"Older users are much less likely to say they have adjusted their Facebook privacy settings in the past 12 months: Only a third of Facebook users 65 and older have done this, compared with 64 percent of younger users," the center added.

Pew released the poll—which involved 4,594 respondents and 3,413 Facebook users—months after it found signs that US teenagers were leaving Facebook for Instagram and Snapchat.

In April, consulting firm Creative Strategies polled 1,000 Americans and found that 17 percent had uninstalled the Facebook app from their smartphones; 9 percent had deleted their account altogether.

About Our Expert

Michael Kan

Michael Kan

Principal Reporter

My Experience

I've been a journalist for over 15 years. I got my start as a schools and cities reporter in Kansas City and joined PCMag in 2017, where I cover satellite internet services, cybersecurity, PC hardware, and more. I'm currently based in San Francisco, but previously spent over five years in China, covering the country's technology sector.

Since 2020, I've covered the launch and explosive growth of SpaceX's Starlink satellite internet service, writing 600+ stories on availability and feature launches, but also the regulatory battles over the expansion of satellite constellations, fights with rival providers like AST SpaceMobile and Amazon, and the effort to expand into satellite-based mobile service. I've combed through FCC filings for the latest news and driven to remote corners of California to test Starlink's cellular service.

I also cover cyber threats, from ransomware gangs to the emergence of AI-based malware. In 2024 and 2025, the FTC forced Avast to pay consumers $16.5 million for secretly harvesting and selling their personal information to third-party clients, as revealed in my joint investigation with Motherboard.

I also cover the PC graphics card market. Pandemic-era shortages led me to camp out in front of a Best Buy to get an RTX 3000. I'm now following how the AI-driven memory shortage is impacting the entire consumer electronics market. I'm always eager to learn more, so please jump in the comments with feedback and send me tips.

The Best Tech I've Had:

  • My first video game console: a Nintendo Famicom
  • I loved my Sega Saturn despite PlayStation's popularity.
  • The iPod Video I received as a gift in college
  • Xbox 360 FTW
  • The Galaxy Nexus was the first smartphone I was proud to own.
  • The PC desktop I built in 2013, which still works to this day.

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