Over Eleven million Facebook users in the US and the UK have deleted their Facebook accounts in view of recent NSA spy program revelations. The number is still increasing and is expected to cross 20 million by the end of September. This phenomenon also known as “Virtual Identity Suicide” is demonstrated by people with privacy confers and internet addiction phobias.
Approximately 9 million Facebook users in the US and 2 million people in the UK have deleted their accounts from the social network, the Daily Mail reports. Reasons for quitting Facebook were mainly privacy concerns (48.3%), followed by a general dissatisfaction (13.5%), negative aspects of online friends (12.6%) and the feeling of becoming addicted (6.0%). Fear of Facebook addiction and unwillingness to waste time on silly talk was mentioned among other reasons for deleting Facebook accounts.
Brenda Wiederhold, editor of the journal Cyberpsychology, Behaviour and Social Networking which published the findings, said:
Given high profile stories such as WikiLeaks and the recent NSA surveillance reports, individual citizens are becoming increasingly more wary of cyber-related privacy concerns.
With over 950 Million active users Facebook barely gets a scratch in its popularity, but if the trend continues the Online Social Giant may be forced to tap into better security and privacy norms to ensure the peace of mind of its members.
[VIA]
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