Following Facebook’s privacy scandals in 2018, a movement called #DeleteFacebook was started in which it encouraged users to delete their Facebook accounts to show the company that the public means business. However based on Facebook’s stats, it seems that this movement hasn’t really done much to affect its bottom line.
Could this because we rely (or are addicted) to social media so much that even the breach of our privacy isn’t enough for us to give up on it? According to a recent study (via ArsTechnica), it seems that might be the case, and that there could be a monetary value attached to what it will take for us to finally give up Facebook.
According to the study, they found that if you paid people to stop using Facebook, they’d be more willing to give it up. On average they found that paying someone $4.17 a day will get them to give up Facebook, $37 for a week, and for an entire year, they found that this amount ranged between $1,000 to $2,000. This was dependent on the demographics as it was found that students needed to be paid more in order to give up Facebook, but $1,000 does seem to be the bare minimum.
That being said, we doubt that apart from this study, no one would pay you to give up your social media, but it does show how much it could “cost” for people to quit the platform. Previously it was reported that Facebook had at one point in time thought about charging users for access which we imagine would have made it easier for users to quit using it.