ERC study into social media impact

The European Research Council has funded a 15-month global study on the impact of social media usage.

During the study, researcher Daniel Miller found that Facebook has declined drastically in popularity among those aged 16-18 in the UK. He discovered that it has been overtaken by Twitter, Instagram, WhatsApp and Snapchat.

He found that young people prefer these media because many of their family members have signed up to Facebook to keep in touch, therefore depleting its ‘cool’ status. In a blog maintained for the study, he said: “You just can’t be young and free while all the time Mum is watching you.”

He added that he thinks Facebook is “finished for the young in the UK”.

Miller intends to show that social media websites seem to reverse the rise of fragmented individualism, something often assumed to be the most fundamental trend of modern life. The study will focus on how such sites lead to connections between people, but how it happens in different ways within each region.