In another mayday for Facebook, its core of millennial users are signaling massive distrust in the social networking giant.
The latest Harvard University Institute of Politics survey of 18-29-year-olds finds that nearly a quarter don’t ever trust Facebook, the latest blow to the service that will face substantial scrutiny on Capitol Hill Tuesday when founder Mark Zuckerberg testifies about a recent massive data breach.
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In the survey, just 4 percent of the millennials and post-millennials said they trust Facebook “all the time.” Some 22 percent said they trust it “most of the time.”
But 23 percent said that they “never” trust Facebook and 48 percent said they trust Zuckerberg’s company “some of the time.”
“Facebook is not really used by the people in my community,” says @Emma4Change.
Good case study re use of social media to inform, persuade, engage. Not all tools design for same purpose.@HarvardIOP poll report on this topic coming soon.https://t.co/48rcSb71QT
— John Della Volpe (@dellavolpe) April 5, 2018
The numbers were about equal to how millennials view Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The survey regularly looks at the trust levels millennials have for public figures and public institutions and this time added in social media and shopping sites.
The favorites are Google and Amazon. Both scored considerably higher than Facebook, Twitter and Uber.
Said the survey overseen by John Della Volpe, Polling Director at Harvard Kennedy School’s Institute of Politics:
Weeks before the Cambridge Analytica story broke about the misuse of Facebook data, Harvard Public Opinion Project students were interested in young Americans views of technology companies engaged in the public realm. Using the same framework that we apply to public institutions and agencies, we find that Amazon and Google are held in relatively high esteem, especially when compared to Uber, Twitter, and Facebook. Overall, 45 percent of 18- to 29-year olds indicated that they trust Amazon, and 44 percent reported that they trust Google, “all” or “most of the time.” Fourteen percent (14%) indicated that they never trust Amazon, and 15 percent said the same about Google.
Approximately half as many young Americans indicate that they trust (all or most of the time) Uber, Twitter, and Facebook when compared to Amazon and Google, and nearly a quarter of the population (between 22% and 24%) never trust them.
