Mustafa Abbas, 21, an engineering student from Chennai, spent most of his school days engulfed in the world of Facebook. Facebook was an integral part of his life and he mentions that it was the perfect medium to share photos, meet people and remember birthdays. But looking back, Mustafa laughs at how addicted he was. He now claims that Facebook has lost much of the virtual leverage it used to have over him. “There are many reasons for severing my Facebook supply line. The most important reason is that I really needed the time and attention it took from me. There I was, losing the best years of my life on irrelevant and avoidable material.” Mustafa isn’t the only one who has lost interest in Facebook.
GlobalWebIndex (GWI), a research firm which claims that it does the world’s largest market research study on digital consumers, studied the social networking trends in India and reported that from Q1 2014 to Q1 2015, Facebook saw a notable decline in active user numbers. “It’s not that people are leaving the site. Nor have they stopped visiting. Rather, it’s that they are using it in more passive ways — visiting it to check their newsfeed without actively posting anything or interacting with other users,” the study claims.
During the early days of Facebook, users used to upload a lot on the platform simply because it was the only option. With newer social networking giants all set for competition, Facebook is left behind in the race and Instagram has become the go-to app for youngsters, according to 21 out of the 25 teenagers interviewed. Shraddha Sunil, 19, says, “All those trivial updates about the day go up on Snapchat. For example, when we cook a dish by ourselves, we feel a need to flaunt our ‘culinary skills’. So we take a picture of it and, since it’s too insignificant to be Instagramed or Facebooked, we put it up on Snapchat. Any information bordering on useless goes up on Snapchat.”
A little lower in the hierarchy is Instagram. Disha Munoth, 20, says, “When we upload a picture on Instagram, we make it a point to upload it also on Facebook if it’s significant. Only the most important ones get through to the next level.”
Zahara Hussain, 22, says, “My Facebook usage has reduced drastically since I entered college. My friends and I have started using Instagram and Snapchat more than Facebook.” Nandhitha Ravindran, 21, says that her active Facebook usage has come down. She says that she has stopped updating her profile picture and status every now and then. “About likes, I care about them more on Instagram. But, nevertheless, it has become a habit to scroll down my news feed at least twice a day.”
Interestingly, 20-year-old Vishal Vijayan, had a very different argument and spoke about Twitter. “Twitter is relatively free of superficial elements that dominate the other social media platforms. Instagram is all about the number of followers one has. Facebook is about the number of likes on your profile picture. There is this unnecessary, unhealthy competition and judgments are made based on the results. Secondly, I feel Twitter is the best medium for disaster management. When there is a controversy, the person involved first tweets their stance to keep the public involved. It’s the happening place for news.”
Suraj Nahar, 22, who has a 16-year-old sister, says, “My sister can now choose from a wide range of apps presented before her. But when I was her age, I didn’t have a choice. Everyone was gaga over Facebook, because the idea of social media was new. She isn’t half as addicted to Facebook as I was when I was her age because her addiction is equally distributed amongst the wide variety of apps that have newly developed.”
As for me — I miss Orkut.
