Study: It Would Take $1,000 To Get People To Quit Facebook

It’s become increasingly common to see Facebook users threatening to quit the platform over its many privacy and security problems. However, when push comes to shove, the vast majority of these disgruntled users don’t follow through. A new study from PLOS One aimed to find out why — and just what it would take to get people to finally quit.

During the study, researchers conducted auction experiments that offered participants sums of money to log off Facebook for one year. After multiple rounds of tests, they found that it consistently took over $1,000 to convince them. As the researchers pointed out, Facebook is actually still growing despite the controversies that have plagued it.

“Concerns about data privacy, such as Cambridge Analytica’s alleged problematic handling of users’ private information, only underscore the value Facebook’s users must derive from the service,” the authors of the study wrote. “Despite the parade of negative publicity… Facebook added 70 million users [in a year]. This implies the value users derive from the social network more than offsets the privacy concerns.”

These results suggest that no matter what befalls Facebook, or what it does to its users, the social media giant isn’t likely to go away anytime soon.