We all have that friend who has stubbornly disappeared from Facebook at one time or another, only to reappear some weeks or months later. In fact, that friend has a good chance of being you, according to a new report from the Pew Internet & American Life Project. The report, published Tuesday, says a hefty majority of Facebook users—61 percent—report having “taken a break” from the site for several weeks or more, largely because they didn’t have the time or energy to be part of Facebook’s Internet society.
Of the 1,006 Pew surveyed in December 2012, seemingly everybody said they’d gotten sick of Facebook at some point, but 20 percent said they were currently on their Facebook sabbaticals. Another 27 percent said they planned to spend less time on the site in the next year. Though most users didn’t plan to change their time spent on the site, only three percent reported wanting to increase their time socially networking.
As for why, the reasons were varied but generally shared the same theme. The top reason (at 21 percent) was because users simply didn’t have time to dedicate to “liking” their friends’ cat photos, pruning their friend lists, or commenting on people’s check-ins to the airport. Equal amounts said they simply weren’t into it and that it was a waste of time, and a full nine percent said their reason for pursuing some non-Facebook time was because there was “too much drama/gossip/negativity/conflict.”