The Anti-Social Network? Conquest's Report into Teens and Social Media Reveals That Facebook is Making Young People Feel Down About Life

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• Publié par: conquest-research
• Nombre de lectures: 10
• Langue: English

Extrait

The Anti-Social Network? Conquest's Report

into Teens and Social Media Reveals That

Facebook is Making Young People Feel Down

About Life

PR Newswire

LONDON, June 21, 2012

LONDON

,

June 21, 2012

/PRNewswire/ --

Financial and mobile issues might prove the least of Mark Zuckerberg's

problems claims a report out this week from top ten award winning

independent market research agency Conquest into the social media habits of

14-24 year olds. It reveals that Facebook's core audience- teenagers-are

starting to fall out of love with the website and that activity may have peaked

amid a mounting groundswell of dissatisfaction and concerns over privacy and

bullying.

While Facebook's pre-eminence is assured in the short term, "Fuicide" (the

attempted or successful deletion of the account) is on the rise as are

complaints about the damaging impact of regular and prolonged Facebook

use. Grievances triggered by Facebook's culture include obsession with

appearance and acceptance of sexually provocative behaviour; increased

negative self esteem, vulnerability to bullying, depression caused by jealousy

and comparing one's life to peers and inability to project one's true self.

Conquest used its avatar driven methodology Metaphorix™ to capture

respondent's authentic feelings about social media.

The Evidence :-

•

Over 30% of the group have had sufficiently bad experience online to

recently attempt or succeed in deleting their accounts, with 13% of regular

users planning to lower their presence over the coming 12 months.

•

Concerns about privacy, bullying and Facebook 'making me feel down about

life' are the most cited reasons:-

•

Specifically:-vulnerability to bullying was stated by 44% as reason for feeling

unhappy about using the site, as well as increased negative self esteem (28%);

depression sparked by unfavourable comparisons with other people's lives

(25%); and plain jealousy of others (24%).

•

Nearly half of all young women (45%) felt that Facebook intensifies an

obsession with appearance. Moreover, 33% of males concurred, with over a

quarter stating that it boosts the acceptance of sexually provocative

presentation.

•

A growing frustration was articulated with the Facebook culture's inability to

enable authentic expression of character. This is offset by young men's relish at

the opportunity afforded to exaggerate the facts about themselves, with 44%

admitting to this.

•

Generally speaking it is unsurprisingly young women who suffer more from

the adverse effects of Facebook than their male counterparts with more

female deleters and complainants of harmful consequences.

New and different sites (like Pinterest and fashism ) have experienced

phenomenal growth in 2012 while Myspace has remained a stalwart for those

musically minded, challenging Facebook's monolithic status. Commented David

Penn MD of Conquest and inventor of the Metaphorix™ methodology:- "Could

the future of social media be more niche networks catering for particular

interests- those which users select in order to feel more comfortable, more

inspired and ultimately more themselves?"

Conquest canvassed 300 regular Facebook users aged between 14 and 24

years old, equally balanced by gender and nationally representative on region.

Conquest carries out quantitative and qualitative research for Heinz, Pizza Hut,

L'Oreal, GoCompare, ITN News, Nationwide, Lever Bros and KFC. It is a pioneer

of innovative online research methodology, welding neuroscience,

communications theory and cognitive linguistics.

For more information, copies of report, stats or

photographs, please contact Omer-li Cohen PR on

[phone]

[e-mail]