Study: A third of Americans “tune out” of social networking sites due to incivility

Cristina Blanaru Creativity, Marketing, Media

A new Weber Sandwick survey, realized in partnership with Powell Tate and KRK Research, showed that 39% of American public is tuning out of social networks due to incivility, according to a press release.

Nearly one-third (34%) of the Americans say they renounce to to American public report that they are "tuning out" of social networking sites, with 39% of them attributing their tune-out to rude discourse and behavior. The online survey was conducted in April, with help from over more than 1,000 Americans that answered how civility affects people’s views of and participation in social media, politics, media and buying behaviors.

In what concerns the study respondents, 45% have defriended or blocked someone online because of uncivil comments or behavior, 32% stopped visiting an online site because of its incivility and 25% dropped out of a fan club or online community because it had become uncivil

The survey asked Americans to rate the civility of 18 aspects of daily life. The public rated blogs more uncivil than social networking sites and Twitter (51% vs. 43% vs. 35%, respectively). Despite one-half of the public citing the presence of incivility in blogs, this figure pales next to the much larger 72% who view the political world and government as uncivil – the highest percentage recorded in the poll.

2 comments

  • Interesting. I wonder if people’s conception of whats civil and what isn’t is changing the longer they participate in social networks and the like. Do you think so?

    • Well, to be honest, I think that for sure a person changes the way he/she thinks about what is civil or not after being present in a social network for a while. Because, inevitably, he/she is exposed to more individuals than in every day life and sees more typologies. But anyway, I think being civil or not is a concept everyone has a personal view upon, so what I might consider rude / bad taste might be appreciated by others. All in all, I think the study actually showed a problem many people have to deal with when they are on social networks and that they eventually find a solution on their own accord: quit the network, defriend, change settings and so on 🙂

Comments are closed.