The number of active Facebook users reached an all-time high of 2,450 billion. To put this in context, approximately 32% of the world's population now uses this social network and the tendency to participate in this platform continues to increase.

With the exception of Google, there has never been a company that has had so many people using its services.

In this context, it may seem strange to talk about those who choose to leave Facebook.

But those who leave the platform represent a small countercurrent, but by no means insignificant.

In 2018, a survey in the United States revealed that 9% of respondents had recently deleted their Facebook account, while another 35% reported that they used the platform less.

Despite its economic success and popularity, it seems that something is happening in the heart of Facebook.

The reasons for leaving this social network are varied and complex, such as Snowden leaks, the Cambridge Analytica scandal and revelations about Mark Zuckerberg's secret meeting with US President Donald Trump were the key motivations. to delete Facebook accounts.

But people who leave the platform rarely raise political scandals or concerns about the privacy of their data as their main motivations for leaving the network.

There are also widely recognized reasons for leaving the platform: concerns about how their opinions are amplified, avoiding wasted time and procrastination, and the negative psychological effects of perpetual social comparison.

But they seem to be more related to the way Facebook is transforming and how this evolving technology mixes with personal experiences.

The notion of "excessive sharing" is discussed as an aspect of Facebook, since many users find their wall full of information they consider too personal and irrelevant.

People who joined Facebook at an early age tend to think that their social networks are too big. The size of a social network seems to be a significant factor in how useful and reliable people find it.

We know that social groups of more than 150 members tend to be too large (this is what is known as the Dunbar number, named after the anthropologist Robin Dunbar), those with networks consisting of several thousand people find each time harder to trust her.

Another problem for the digital innocents is the time they have been filing their lives on Facebook, where the material shared about themselves was less selective and seen now could be a threat to the social image they want to project as an adult.

One of the reasons for the success of social networks is, of course, their ability to take advantage of our social instinct to share and exchange knowledge.

But as social circles grow within Facebook, it seems that the costs of mutual obligation (they liked my post, so I better like theirs) start to outweigh the benefits of being connected.

Although Facebook can still grow, those who leave the platform reveal interesting trends that suggest how future relationships with smart technology and social networks will develop.

We are in an era of unprecedented opportunities for connection and social participation.

Those who leave Facebook are at one end of a spectrum in which we all live while we try to resolve issues of digital identity, responsibility and collective customs.

Leaving social networks is one of several options that we can choose when trying to navigate in this new world. The small number of people who delete Facebook will not change their economic model in the short term.

But, in the future, the company may see the limits of participation in social media platforms.