For many of us, social media has become an important tool in the running of our day-to-day lives. We use social media to keep in touch with loved ones, share our favourite content and memes or we will just scroll through our feeds when boredom strikes.
But while social media has many positive features, it can also be a very toxic environment.
According to a report from Reboot Online, South Africans are among the global internet users most likely to quit social media. This study was based on key online searches indicating their clear intention to quit social media.
Reboot Online classified and grouped consistently recurring Google searches by individuals on quitting social media such as ‘how to delete social media?’, ‘how to delete Facebook?’, ‘how to delete Instagram?’, ‘how to delete Tumblr?’, ‘how to delete TikTok’?, ‘how to delete Twitter?’ and ‘how to delete Snapchat?’ as online searches which most signify users’ desire to quit social media.
The report found that Americans are the most likely to quit social media with an average of 1,134,400 online searches per month indicating their intention to leave social media forever.
In the second position is India with an average of 497,940 online searches a month, followed by the United Kingdom with 308,850 online searches, Canada with 109,120 online searches, and Australia with 97,060 online searches.
South Africa was in ninth place as there was a reported average of 31 340 online searches every month from South Africans demonstrating their desire to exit social media permanently.
To put it into perspective, there are 31,858,027 active internet users in South Africa, meaning 0.098% of South African internet users are keen to quit social media EACH MONTH.
IOL Tech