AudienceProject: 2019 App and Social Media Usage Report

Audience Project released the "2019 App and Social Media Usage Report". Although 7/10 American adults still use Facebook, its appeal has declined. Audience Project's research on 13,000 social media users aged 15 and above from the United States and Europe shows that Facebook is no longer as indispensable as it used to be.

In 2017, 26% of US respondents said Facebook was one of their top three apps. Two years later, that number dropped to 21%. Other countries saw a bigger drop in preference. 21% of respondents from Norway said Facebook was one of their top three apps this year, compared to 32% two years ago. Similarly, in the UK, Facebook's importance dropped from 32% in 2017 to 23% in 2019. Last year, a Pew report showed that 47% of Facebook users aged 18-29 in the US had left Facebook for a few weeks or more. AudienceProject data also found that Facebook is even less important in younger age groups (between 18-25 years old). Only about 1 in 5 of these young social media users consider Facebook to be the social media platform they can't live without. For American teens in particular, Facebook lost out to Snapchat, Instagram, and Twitter as their favorite social media platform. A recent study also found that only 31% of American teens use Facebook, while Instagram (85%) and Snapchat (81%) are much more popular than Facebook.

In contrast, older generations are more attached to Facebook. Three in 10 people aged 46-55 surveyed by AudienceProject cannot live without Facebook, while only about one-third (32%) of respondents in the other three age groups (26-35, 36-45 and 56+) said Facebook is the social media platform they cannot live without.