Users Don’t Trust Social Media Platforms Anymore According to New Study

Trust is the name of the game as far as social platforms are concerned, and a consumer will only be able to experience a fair amount of digital trust if they are sure that their social media platform of choice will protect their data and secure their content online. In spite of the fact that this is the case, it seems that social media platforms are failing to meet the needs of their consumers. The sixth iteration of Insider Intelligence’s annual survey sheds some light on this issue.

This survey was conducted between the months of May and June in 2022, and it involve asking questions of around 2,225 adults who are based in the US. All of these users were between the ages of 18 and 75, so they represent the vast majority of the population of the US. With all of that having been said and now out of the way, it is important to note that trust in social media platforms has plummeted in the past three years.

Facebook is the worst offender here. Back in 2020, around 30% of Facebook users felt that they could trust the platform. That has now dropped to just 18%, which just goes to show how untrustworthy Facebook has become with all things having been considered and taken into account. However, Facebook is not the only social media platform that has seen a decline in how much trust users place in it.

The second least trusted platform turned out to be Twitter, with just 23% of respondents saying that they felt that they could trust this social media company. That has gone down from a relatively stable 40% in 2019, so Twitter is also seeing a similar drop in trustworthiness and in fact its decline in these numbers has been even more drastic than that of Facebook.

The rising social media star that is TikTok is also facing a lot of issues on this front. In the year of 2020, approximately 41% of TikTok users said that they could trust the platform. This has now fallen to just 24% by 2022.

Moving on to Instagram, this social media company is not giving Meta any relief. Only 25% of Instagram users say that they placed trust in the platform which is down from 41%. Interestingly, slightly more users trust Instagram than TikTok, and that might impact the growth rate of the Chinese app moving forward.

What all of this suggests is that user trust in social media platforms is at an all time low. They can no longer afford to ignore this issue, although some like Facebook will definitely try to act like there is no problem in the first place.

Read next: 91% of Gen X and Baby boomers feel overwhelmed by technology, study finds
by Zia Muhammad via Digital Information World