Facebook: why people leave, their experiences, and opinions towards (other) social media.

With the ongoing negative presence of Facebook in the news this past year, it made Facebook an interesting case to study, as many more people seem to quit this social media platform. This paper examines what reasons young (previous) Facebook users gave to quit Facebook, how they experienced quitting Facebook, how they now look at other social media platforms as well as the rules they have applied to their social media (and the Internet in general) usage. Even though research has been done on the reasons to quit before and how people experienced it, this study focuses on a younger generation, aged 16-25, which was a recommendation from Baumer et al (2013). Fourteen participants were interviewed, from which nine were male and six were female. All interviews were transcribed and analyzed using a thematic analysis. It was found that the participants were very aware of the reasons why they quit Facebook and these reasons seemed to be of big importance to them. By growing older, they noticed they became more aware of the effects Facebook had on their lives, often negatively and this related to their reasons to quit. Often, the experiences, both positive and negative, were related to their reasons to quit, where first some felt Facebook was disconnecting them with their friends, they now felt they started connecting more. However, others felt it was disconnecting them even more. Also, after quitting Facebook, they became more aware of the negative effects of Facebook. Most of the participants started, or tried, reducing their other social media use after quitting Facebook, or some even before, when they realized how much impact other social media still have on them. Even though seeing the negative effects of social media, most of the participants still were using other platforms, as they also saw the positive effects social media can have. For some, after quitting Facebook, they became more reliant on other social media platforms, such as Reddit or Youtube, but it was seen as less worse. By quitting Facebook while simultaneously growing older, they became more aware of how they should use the Internet in general. Instead of wasting time, they were trying to use it more productively, but they also posted less themselves. They considered each platform to be quite different from each other, where Instagram for example is more one-sided, and Reddit is more anonymous, which are the reasons why they look at these platforms differently even after quitting Facebook.